The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City

WESTFIELD MEDIEVAL STUDIES Volume 1

The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City

WESTFIELD MEDIEVAL STUDIES ISSN 0307–5362

Editorial Board Rosamund Allen (General Editor) Professor Julia Boffey Dr Virginia Davis Professor Alan Deyermond Dr Peter Orton Mr Brian Place Professor Silvia Ranawake Professor Miri Rubin

Westfield Medieval Studies is an interdisciplinary series, publishing scholarly monographs, editions, and collections of broad comparative interest on the culture of Europe (and other areas in exceptional cases) from the early Middle Ages to the late fifteenth century. Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to the General Editor at the address given below; all submissions will receive prompt and informed consideration. Rosamund Allen, School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS

The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City

PAMELA M. KING

D. S. BREWER

© Pamela M. King 2006

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Pamela M. King to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2006 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN 1 84384 098 7

D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library Printed from camera-ready copy supplied by the author This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

Contents

Acknowledgements Abbreviations

vii ix

Introduction

Civic Drama and Worship

1

Part 1

Corpus Christi Play

7

Chapter 1

The York Cycle and Corpus Christi

10

Part 2

The Selection and Organisation of the Cycle

31

Chapter 2

From after Epiphany to Septuagesima

37

Chapter 3

Septuagesima to Quadragesima

48

Chapter 4

Quadragesima to Palm Sunday

68

Part 3

Feast of Feasts

87

Chapter 5

The Christmas Season

93

Chapter 6

Holy Week and After

130

Chapter 7

The Sacraments of the Church

169

Part 4

… or Feast of Fools

181

Chapter 8

Feast of Fools?

184

Select Bibliography

205

Index of Liturgical References

217

General Index

229

v

This book is dedicated to the other members of York Doomsday Project: Meg Twycross, Olga Horner, Muriel Utting, and Andrew Prescott, as well as to the postgraduate students who have been attached to the Project over its twelve years, especially Helen Bennett and Lena Etherington. Without the support of the Wednesday morning coffee club, it would never have been written. I am deeply grateful to them all.

Acknowledgements

My thanks must go first to the Editorial Board of Westfield Publications in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. As a founder member of that Board who has since moved on, I have been very pleased by how the series has established itself, and am honoured now to be one of its contributing authors. Much of this book has seen previous incarnation in a number of articles and essays I have published in recent years. I first expressed my ideas about the evidence for a close connection between the Cycle and the feast of Corpus Christi which forms the argument of Chapter 1 in ‘York Plays and the Feast of Corpus Christi: A Reconsideration’, Medieval English Theatre 22 (2002 for 2000), 13–32. ‘Calendar and Text: Christ’s Ministry in the York Plays and the Liturgy’, Medium Ævum 67 (1998), 30–59 provides much of the material which has been reworked in Chapters 2 and 4. The background research for Chapter 7 draws on material I used in ‘The York Cycle and Instruction on the Sacraments’ in Learning and Literacy in Medieval England and Abroad, ed. Sarah Rees Jones (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 3; Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 155–78. And two articles, ‘Contemporary Cultural Models for the Trial Plays in the York Cycle’ in Drama and Community: People and Plays in Medieval Europe, ed. Alan Hindley (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 200–16 and ‘The York Plays in Performance: Civitas versus Templum’, Medieval English Theatre 24 (2005), 84–97, are earlier versions of parts of the argument of the book’s final chapter. In all cases I am grateful to the relevant editorial boards and publishers for permission to reproduce and/or adapt material here. The fluency and accuracy of the English translations of the liturgy of York Use, particularly in Chapters 5 and 6, are thanks entirely to the work of Dr Shelagh Sneddon who was my research assistant for a crucial year during the preparation of the book, funded by a discretionary grant from the St Martin’s College (Lancaster) Research Committee under the chairmanship of Dr Hugh Cutler. Any inaccuracies in the English translations of the Latin elsewhere in the volume are my own responsibility. The cover illustration and frontispiece are taken from Rogier van der Weyden’s altarpiece ‘De Zeven Sacramenten’, reproduced by kind permission of the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp. vii

THE YORK MYSTERY CYCLE AND THE WORSHIP OF THE CITY

Many other friends, family members, and colleagues supported me and offered advice during the long period of the book’s gestation, and they will forgive me if not all are mentioned by name. Last but not least, however, is Meg Twycross who has shared the journey with me all the way, corrected my errors, contributed numerous pieces of additional information, brought the manuscript to camera-ready form, and used her superior computer skills to take the labour out of generating the bibliography and index. For all this, and above all for her tireless and exacting services as my critical friend, I am in her debt.

viii

Abbreviations

Calendar of the Patent Rolls

Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, prepared under the superintendence of the Deputy Keeper of the Records by J.G. Black and others (London: HM Stationery Office,

1891–, reprinted Nedeln: Kraus, 1971) Douay/Rheims

The Holy Bible translated from the Latin Vulgate: Douay-Rheims version (Rockford, ILL: TAN Books, 1971, facsimile of Baltimore:

EETS OS, ES, SS

Early English Text Society, Ordinary Series, Extra Series, Supplementary Series

MED

Middle English Dictionary edited Hans Kurath and others (Ann

OED

The Oxford English Dictionary, 12 vols and supplements (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933–; re-issue of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 10 vols, 1884–1928). Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: Migne, 1854–; reprinted

Murphy, 1899 edition).

PL PMLA REED Rolls Series

Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1954–2001).

Turnhout: Brepols, 1976).

Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Records of Early English Drama Rerum Britannicarum Medii Ævi Scriptores, or Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, published … under the Direction of the Master of the Rolls, ed.

various authors, 99 vols (London: Longman and Co., later Eyre and Spottiswoode, for HMSO, 1858–96).

Statutes at Large

The Statutes at Large from Magna Charta to the end of the Eleventh Parliament of Great Britain Anno 1761, ed. Danby Pickering, 24 vols

(Cambridge: J. Bentham for Charles Bathurst, 1762–1766). Surtees Society Publications

The Publications of the Surtees Society (Durham, London, and Edinburgh: Andrews and others for the Society, 1834–).

Vulgate

Biblia sacra iuxta vulgatam Clementinam, ed. Alberto Colunga and Laurentio Turrado (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1965). Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesie Eboracensis (York Breviary),

York Breviary York Manual and Processional York Missal

ed. S.W. Lawley, 2 vols, Surtees Society Publications 71 (1880 for 1871) and 75 (1883 for 1882).

Manuale et Processionale ad usum insignis ecclesiæ Eboracensis,

ed. W.G. Henderson, Surtees Society Publications 63 (1875).

Missale ad usum insignis ecclesiæ Eboracensis (The York Missal),

ed. W.G. Henderson, 2 vols, Surtees Society Publications 59 (1874 for 1872) and 60 (1874 for 1872).

ix

Til the day dawed thise damyseles carolden, That men rongen to the resurexion – and right with that I wakede, And called Kytte my wif and Calote my doghter: ‘Ariseth and reverenceth Goddes resurexion, And crepeth to the cros on knees, and kisseth it for a juwel! For Goddes blissede body it bar for oure boote, And it afereth the fend – for swich is the myghte, May no grisly goost glide there it shadweth!’ William Langland, Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus 18, lines 427-34.

Introduction

Civic Drama and Worship English medieval drama has been understood throughout most of the modern period to consist chiefly of two dominant categories of play. The categories ‘mystery play’ and ‘morality play’ – also known as ‘moral interlude’ – were devised from the evidence of the few scripts which survive from the pre-Reformation period. Both categories are devotional in focus, treating aspects of the narrative of the Fall and Redemption of humanity. This narrative derives from orthodox Western European medieval theology and is reflected across the arts and culture of the later Middle Ages. Mystery plays present the narrative as biblical history. Four surviving ‘cycles’, known as the York and Chester Cycles, and the Towneley/Wakefield and N. Town Plays, are understood as being virtually complete. In addition, two long, composite, and late mystery plays have survived from Coventry, and there are records and fragments of other similar productions which took place elsewhere. Where plays, or records of plays, survive which do not appear to have been part of larger cycles, they were assimilated into the same category. The moral interlude, on the other hand, has been distinguished by the fact that it presents the same narrative trajectory of Fall and Redemption in the allegorical mode. This simple convergent model has come under increasing pressure, particularly since the work of the Records of Early English Drama project has revealed a plethora of dramatic activity in late medieval England which does not conform to the binary model derived from surviving scripts. At the same time, those scripts have been subjected to continuing scrutiny which has focused increasingly on the tenuous nature of the received modal categories. 1 The four extant mystery cycles, though superficially comparable, are now recognised as being quite diverse. It is now well known that the so-called N. Town Plays represent a compilation whose circumstances of performance, actual or conceptual, differ markedly from the civic cycles. The Towneley manuscript has come under renewed scrutiny in recent years and its presumed status as a cycle performed in Wakefield has been called into 1

For a recent and more sophisticated examination of categories of medieval English drama see Meg Twycross, ‘Medieval English Theatre: Codes and Genres’ in

The Blackwell Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c.1350-c.1500, ed. Peter Brown (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).

1

THE YORK MYSTERY CYCLE AND THE WORSHIP OF THE CITY

question. Even the Chester Plays, whose status as a civic cycle is well supported, survive in texts which were recorded after the Reformation and though originally a Corpus Christi Play, were performed at Whitsun from at least 1521, with a final outing at Midsummer in 1575. 2 The project here, however, is not to attempt to redraw the map of the modes and genres of English medieval drama, but to re-examine in this context the York Plays, England’s earliest extant Corpus Christi cycle. The time seems right to return to a broadly textual approach, free from the cross-cycle comparisons upon which a whole generation of latetwentieth-century scholars was reared, but informed by the work on civic history, cultural theory, and staging, and by the publication of archival materials, which have characterised recent scholarship. What do we understand by ‘the York Cycle’? The term now means different things to scholars approaching it from different angles. To the student of fifteenth-century dramatic literature, the York Cycle is embodied in the series of forty-seven pageants which survive in British Library Additional MS 35290. This is the York Register, a record of the pageants as performed, which was commissioned and established by the civic authorities in the 1460s/1470s and maintained from year to year by a succession of civic officials, the Common Clerks, until the mid sixteenth century. The exercise of registering never achieved a definitive record, yet as a working document the Register nonetheless provides complete texts of a large number of short pageants, and their attributions to the trade and craft guilds responsible for their performance, complete with the speech headings from which cast lists can be constructed, as well as a few sparse stage directions. 3 To the historian of civic entertainments in York, however, the Register is an incidental and late-coming record, focusing on the spoken word and largely ignoring other aspects of performance. It is indeed only one of a number of important records of the Cycle, although its status as script has tended understandably to give it a special standing. The Records of Early English Drama collection has, however, selected, organised, and made accessible other records of the York Cycle which

2 See for example The Mary Play from the N. town Manuscript, ed. Peter Meredith (London: Longman, 1987; 2nd revised edition, Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1997); David Mills, Recycling the Cycle: The City of Chester and Its Whitsun Plays (Studies in Early English Drama 4; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998); Barbara D. Palmer, ‘”Towneley Plays” or “Wakefield Cycle” Revisited’, Comparative Drama 21 (1988), 318–48, and ‘Recycling “The Wakefield Cycle”: The Records’, Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 41 (2002), 88–130. 3 See The York Play: A Facsimile of British Library MS Additional 35290 together with a Facsimile of the ‘Ordo Paginarum’ section of the A/Y Memorandum Book, ed. Richard Beadle and Peter Meredith (Leeds Texts and Monographs Medieval Drama Facsimiles 7; Leeds: University of Leeds School of English, 1983).

2

CIVIC DRAMA AND WORSHIP

have informed scholarship in other ways. 4 For example, from a period at least thirty years earlier than the registering of the text of the Mercers’ pageant of The Last Judgement there survives an indenture by which the Mercers guild transferred a list of properties associated with its pageant to the pageant masters who were charged with ensuring its performance. 5 This single-folio document has cast more light on the staging of processional drama than that which glimmers from the whole Register, yet we cannot be secure that the text of The Last Judgement in the Register bears more than a passing generic resemblance to the pageant for which those properties were devised. Perhaps the greatest challenge to the canonical status of the Register, however, is the first detailed record of the episodes presented in York in celebration of Corpus Christi Day, the so-called Ordo paginarum of 1415. 6 This document, also produced as a city officials’ initiative and preserved in the A/Y Memorandum Book, 7 details a sequence of biblical episodes and apportions responsibility for them to the various craft and trade guilds then operating in the city. The guild attributions vary somewhat in this list from that in the Register. One might expect this, given the economic vicissitudes faced by the city in the intervening half-century. What the Ordo additionally reveals, however, is that the number of episodes and the cast list within each was often very different in 1415. Indeed there is nothing in the Ordo to confirm or refute whether the pageants it lists were performed in the manner suggested half a century later by the Register, and even eighteen years later by the Mercers’ indenture or, to take an extreme position, whether a single word was spoken. 8 The scholar in the study is faced with the problem of reconciling the edition of the York Plays, 9 based on the Register, with those other testimonies to the cycle contained in the volumes of the Records of Early English Drama. Moreover, the accumulation of all extant evidence concerning the cycle throws into ever sharper relief the major unanswered questions about its ultimate origins and about the authorship of the pageants, areas attracting well-informed speculation but as yet no conclusive evidence. The scholar in the archives is now 4 Records of Early English Drama: York, ed. Alexandra F. Johnston and Margaret Rogerson, 2 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978); hereafter referred to as REED: York. 5 REED: York, vol. 1, 55. 6 REED: York, vol. 1, 21. 7 See York Memorandum Book, ed. Maud Sellers, 2 vols, Surtees Society Publications 120 (1912 for 1911) and 125 (1915 for 1914). 8 Meg Twycross, ‘The Ordo paginarum revisited, with a digital camera’ in ‘Bring

furth the pagants’: Studies in Early English Drama presented to Alexandra F. Johnston, ed. David Klausner (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006). 9 The definitive critical edition of the Register is The York Plays, ed. Richard

Beadle (London: Arnold, 1982).

3

THE YORK MYSTERY CYCLE AND THE WORSHIP OF THE CITY

aware that the understanding of the status of the Register and, in particular, of the Ordo paginarum, is the product of their published editions, because both manuscripts are working documents, palimpsests subject to constant revision. Erasures and ellipses offer a different order of information, albeit hard to retrieve, from what remains legible on the page. 10 What emerges from the ever-growing body of information about the York Cycle is not just the truism that the more we know the less we know, but more usefully an approach to the cycle which asserts its ephemerality. Students of the performing arts are comfortable with the concept of ephemerality and have developed languages with which to deal with the fleeting cultural moment; but whatever critical and theoretical language one chooses, it remains clear that a definitive York Cycle is irretrievable. Mathematicians specialising in topology supply a useful metaphor in the torus. A torus is a figure with a hole in the middle. The material surrounding the hole can be, for example, a ringdoughnut, a bagel, or a teacup; the hole is still there, defined by the surrounding matter. This study seeks to take bearings on the hole that is the York Cycle by re-examining the Register, acknowledging its proper status in regard to the history of the cycle, and reviewing the nature of the cycle as a phenomenon of its own shifting cultural moment. The focus here will be on the relatively secure territory of subjectmatter. The York Cycle consistently focuses through all its apparent vicissitudes on a series of ‘pageants’ – the preferred term, used since the fifteenth century to describe individual episodes – beginning with the Creation and Fall of Lucifer, ending with Doomsday, and focusing most of its attention on the Passion of Christ. This subject-matter has led to the designation of the cycle as ‘biblical drama’, while acknowledging a thematic ordering of biblical narrative that highlights the moment of Redemption. This is not, of course, new to the devisers of the cycle, being a commonplace of the mainstream Latin and vernacular theological tradition of its time.  But as simple reception theory teaches us, subject-matter does not exist essentially but only as a product of the interaction between text and audience. This interaction, in the absence of the distraction of an author, allows us to read the York Cycle against what Foucault would have termed its ‘authorising milieu’. There is much to inform our understanding of that milieu in the continuing industry of the scholars of medieval York’s social and economic history, and we will come back to the city as it is understood in those terms at the end of this book. There are, however, other areas of exploration which have been given less attention and to which the bulk of this study is devoted. They lie particularly in the area of popular worship. The York Play: A Facsimile, li–lix; Meg Twycross, ‘Forget the 4.30 a.m. Start’, Medieval English Theatre 25 (2003), 98–152. 10

4

CIVIC DRAMA AND WORSHIP

The subject-matter of the pageants has been thoroughly examined in the context of late medieval theology and its reflection in contemporary Christian iconography, but less attention has been paid to what bearing these influences might have had on the micro-society of medieval York. The York Cycle emerges in the records, as we shall see, at a particular ecclesiastical and theological moment for the Church in the North of England. Its evolution, the evolution of its subject-matter, and the particular articulation of that subject-matter, merit reading against those particularities. This will centrally involve an examination of the feast of Corpus Christi as it was celebrated in the city, as well as a return to exploring the cycle’s relationship with the liturgy and with lay patterns and experiences of worship. There has been no sustained study of the relationship between the cycle and the liturgy since the middle of the twentieth century, yet, for urban laypeople, the liturgy provided the skeleton of all their communal religious experience, the pattern of their calendar, and their focus on the different biblical texts which go to make up the Christian narrative. A return to the text must centrally involve a renewed focus on the worship of the city in its various forms. Moreover, worship held two related senses for the medieval civic community, conveying, as well as ‘religious observation’, the sense of ‘civic honour’. 11 The York Cycle is central to both.

11 Honour and worship were effectively semantic doublets. See e.g. REED: York, vol. 1, 138 (1486): ‘Sir henrie Hudson prest that he shuld haue the conueance of the making and directing of the shew to be maide ayenst the kinges next commyng hedyr which the said henrie haith vndertake to do to the worship of the Citie …’

5

Part 1

Corpus Christi Play From its first appearance in the records, the performance of what became the York Cycle is linked with the feast of Corpus Christi. This great summer moveable feast was a late arrival in the Church’s calendar, authorised by the papacy for universal use in 1264. It occurred on the last Thursday after Trinity Sunday, which could be any time between 23 May and 24 June. Corpus Christi celebrates Christ’s presence in the Host consecrated at the Mass, effectively an annual affirmation of the doctrine of transubstantiation. Both the feast itself and the festive events which clustered around it have been the subject of a number of studies and a wide range of different approaches, 1 yet the precise relationship between the festal meaning of Corpus Christi and the nature of the cycle remains in certain respects to be satisfactorily addressed. The cycle, from its first modest appearances in civic records at the end of the fourteenth century, 2 became an increasingly ambitious project, involving a sequence of pageants in procession, telling the story of the world from Creation to Doomsday. By the time the scripts were closely recorded in the Register in the 1460s/1470s, it was made up of forty-seven pageants, performed on wagons which stopped in sequence at each of twelve stations around the city, with around 14,000 lines of spoken dialogue, and involving a huge cast of characters, including twenty-four men capable of taking on the role of the adult Christ. 3 The notable examples include V.A. Kolve, The Play Called Corpus Christi (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1966); Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400– 1580 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992); and Sarah Beckwith, Christ’s Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings (New York and London: Routledge, 1993), and Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in the York Corpus Christi Play (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001). 2 REED: York, vol. 1, 4–7. 3 For details of the staging of the Cycle see Meg Twycross, ‘The Theatricality of Medieval English Plays’ in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed. Richard Beadle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 37–84. For an introduction to the York Cycle see Richard Beadle, ‘The York Cycle’, also in Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, 85–108, and Pamela M. King, ‘The York Cycle’ in The Blackwell Companion to Medieval Literature and Culture c.1350–c.1500, ed. Peter Brown (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006). 1

7

THE YORK MYSTERY CYCLE AND THE WORSHIP OF THE CITY

Clearly if one were to entertain the ambition to mount a theatrical production on this scale, Corpus Christi Day is a good date to choose. Approaching the question purely pragmatically, Corpus Christi was the holiday which fell closest to the longest day, so offered the best promise of good weather northern England can hope for. Mystery plays were high summer festivals. When the sacramental focus of Corpus Christi became theologically uncomfortable for post-Reformation Chester, the cycle there was moved back to Whitsun – only eleven days earlier – and a number of its characters then reappeared in the Show on Midsummer Day. Corpus Christi remained a common choice, however, in the second half of the sixteenth century in a number of other places including for example Coventry, where there was also a Midsummer Show involving a procession of giants. 4 Establishing that staging a major outdoor production in the middle of summer was a sensible choice still leaves certain questions unanswered. Why did York’s ambitious cycle evolve in the form that it did, and can that form be more closely linked to the theological purpose of the feast it was inaugurated to celebrate? Answers to these questions depend on how the subject-matter of the cycle is understood and described. Clearly it is based on narrative events drawn from the Bible and Apocrypha. 5 It has huge narrative ambition, encompassing everything that ever was, is, or shall be, but it is also highly selective. The resultant selection has come to be recognised as canonical, but is superficially rather odd. It begins with an account of the Fall of the Angels, which is not where the Bible begins at all, then moves on to present a cluster of events from the beginning of the Old Testament. It then lurches to an account of the Annunciation, the intervening generations and events of the Old Testament being the subject of a brief account given by a ‘Doctour’. There follows a collection of episodes surrounding the birth of Christ, then a minimal sequence covering the events of his adult life, preparing for a relatively detailed account of the events surrounding the Passion and Resurrection. The cycle concludes with Pentecost and the Ascension, followed by a cluster of pageants dealing with the end of the life of the Virgin Mary, and the spectacular finale, Doomsday. 6 4 See David Mills, ‘The Chester Cycle’ in Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, 109–33; for the Coventry Cycle, see The Coventry Corpus Christi Plays, ed. Pamela M. King and Clifford Davidson (Early Drama Art and Music

Reference Series 27; Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000). 5 To place the York Cycle amongst other examples of biblical drama see Lynette Muir, The Biblical Drama of Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), and Meg Twycross, ‘The Theatre’ in The Blackwell Companion to the Bible and Culture, ed. John Sawyer (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006). 6 All references to the extant pageants are to York Plays, ed. Beadle; the York Register has been published in facsimile in The York Play: A Facsimile, ed. Beadle and Meredith.

8

CORPUS CHRISTI PLAY

The selection of episodes has been subject to examination and explanation in the critical literature for some time. Discussion has been informed by knowledge of the great Passion Plays performed in the later Middle Ages in continental Europe. One way of reading the cycle is as a Passion Play which is embellished firstly by a series of Old Testament episodes that contemporary theology presented as figural types of the Redemption, and which secondly offers a more complete account of the parallel life and death of the Virgin Mary. The best test of this explanation of the cycle’s subject-matter is its similarity to the N. Town Plays, a sequence now known to have developed by merging and extending a pre-existing set of pageants with the addition of a Passion Play and a play of the life of the Virgin Mary. 7 Other explanations of the ordering and selection of the cycle consider how the Middle Ages imposed patterns on history such as the Seven Ages of Man, or the Three Comings of God. The view that all events were important to contemporary theology – and therefore to the authors of the cycle – primarily for their figural meaning has become the most influential explanation for the narrative selection in the cycle. 8 Accounting for the cycle’s principles of selection in this way has refined what we understand by biblical narrative, and has also demonstrated how the cycle focuses on redemption. What has not been demonstrated in these accounts is whether and how the York Cycle is a play for Corpus Christi. They also fail to explain how the milieu in which the cycle was generated and received understood its connection to their own place in the grand design. What, for example, was the relationship between the cycle, York’s fashionable religious confraternity of Corpus Christi, and contemporary lay devotional tastes? Do the texts of the pageants as preserved in the York Register relate to forms and patterns of lay Host-worship? Taken together, the answers to these two questions will help to articulate a reading of the Cycle as a celebration specific to the feast of Corpus Christi, rather than a reprise of Christian history located at the time of the feast because the weather was likely to be good and the day long.

The Mary Play from the N. town Manuscript, and The Passion Play from the N. town Manuscript, ed. Peter Meredith (London: Longman, 1990). 8 See Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953), 7

143–73.

9

Chapter 1

The York Cycle and Corpus Christi Various lay celebrations grew up around Europe to mark Corpus Christi Day, generally focused on the processing of the consecrated Host around or through the civic space. The route taken by such a procession, and the spaces included in and excluded from its compass, signified urban and/or ecclesiastical understandings of the nature of the city and the hierarchies governing it. 1 The line-up of groups accompanying the Host also reflected civic hierarchies, commonly separating the ecclesiastical from the lay. The laity was generally mustered according firstly to the hierarchy of central civic government, and secondly in confraternal organisations that processed in an order that reflected their relative status. Many cities in Spain still celebrate Corpus Christi Day in this manner. Valencia’s particularly elaborate celebration, which also involves processions of dancing troupes, of horse-drawn wagons carrying allegorical tableaux, of giants, and of biblical characters carrying their attributes, culminates in the processing of the Host in its monstrance around a designated route in the city accompanied by representatives of the civic, ecclesiastical, and military authorities. 2 Valencia’s is only one surviving example of the manner in which Corpus Christi Day has been and is used to express, through the processional mode, divine sanction of the make-up and ordering of power and authority in the civic space. Confraternities commonly define and sanction power- and interestgroupings in civic spaces. They are also a common organisational mechanism for the production of events designed to give symbolic expression to the specific nature of power and interests in the same spaces. 3 Lay civic society in late medieval York involved a network of confraternal organisations. 4 Manufacturing and trading activity was 1

Further discussion of the semantics of processions can be found in the Introduction to Part 3 below. 2 For a full description of Corpus Christi in Valencia see Pamela M. King, ‘Corpus Christi: Valencia’, European Medieval Drama 4 (2000), 181–205. 3 This subject yields very fruitfully to anthropological case study such as Gwen Kennedy Neville’s The Mother Town: Civic Ritual, Symbol, and Experience in the Borders of Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). 4 The term confraternity inherited gender-inclusiveness from the Latin use of fratres.

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controlled through the exclusive trade and craft guilds. These were based on micro-networks of extended specialist families and an accompanying apprenticeship system, and clustered around particular streets where the parish church offered the focus for communal worship as well as for basic pastoral care including education. These guilds were the organisations which took responsibility for the production of individual pageants in the York Cycle. They were also represented in the civic Corpus Christi procession. In addition to, and in some cases predating, the evolved trade- and craft-guild system, was a network of religious confraternities, sometimes also called guilds. These societies had a devotional focus and a benevolent function, providing security for their members when they became old and infirm and acting as burial clubs. Their membership intersected with that of the trade and craft organisations but also included members of the secular clergy and some members of the mendicant orders. As a structure they acted as an extension of the Church’s function as provider of care for the old, the sick, the disabled, and the dying. The two guild structures should not, however, be seen as wholly distinct, as for example the Mercers’ guild evolved out of the religious confraternity dedicated to the Holy Trinity and the Blessed Virgin Mary through the middle of the fifteenth century as the city’s economic circumstances changed. One of the religious confraternities to develop in fifteenth-century York was that devoted to Corpus Christi. As well as participating in the Corpus Christi procession, this confraternity eventually came to share its management with the Common Clerk. 5 The emergence of the York Cycle, however, predates the formation of this confraternity and has a history which is entirely discrete at the organisational level. 6 The cycle was under the direct control of the mayor acting through the civic authority and devolving responsibility for individual pageants down to the trade- and craft-guild structure. The civic Corpus Christi procession in fifteenth-century York moved according to its own timetable and route around the city, tying up those involved, presumably, for the duration of its progress. The pageants assembled early in the morning on Toft Green and their sequential progress from station to station took up all the hours of daylight, involving not only the players and stagehands, but the trade- and craft-guild members who accompanied each David J.F. Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power: Religious Guilds in Late Medieval Yorkshire (York: York Medieval Press, 2000), 164. The guild keepers took over responsibility for marshalling the procession and for carrying the feretrum,

5

but the Common Clerk retained overall control of the procession and its ordering. 6 See most recently, Alexandra F. Johnston, ‘What if no Texts Survived? External Evidence for Early English Drama’ in Contexts for Early English Drama, ed. Marianne G. Briscoe and John C. Coldewey (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), 1–19, at 11.

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wagon. It would not have been possible, therefore, to march in the Corpus Christi procession accompanying the Host and to be involved with the production and accompanying of the pageants, until the procession was moved to the day after Corpus Christi sometime between 1463 and 1468. 7 Although the Guild of Corpus Christi as a whole had no hand in the pageants, such distinctions break down at the level of individual members. The single most significant record of the production of a pageant in the York Cycle is the so-called Mercers’ Indenture of 1433. This document provides vital insight into what can – and what cannot – be surmised about the arrangement of the action of a single pageant on its wagon, and the properties and costumes belonging to it. From the Indenture we know, for example, that pageant wagons could have more than one level, could carry lifting gear and other moving scenery, and that at least some characters were dressed in wigs and masks. It also provides the names of some of the people involved in ensuring that the production took place, particularly the Master of the guild and the so-called ‘pageant masters’ to whom everything pertaining to the production was formally transferred by the Indenture and who were charged with its management. The names of the guild Master and guild Constables, as well as all of the pageant masters mentioned in the Indenture, also appear in the membership lists of the Corpus Christi guild in the first twenty years of the confraternity’s existence. 8 The popularity of devotion to Corpus Christi cuts across social divisions in the city, from the members of individual trade and craft guilds to the central aldermanic group. The ‘aldermanic group’ refers to an identifiable civic élite in York from whom the mayors were drawn. In the early fifteenth century members of this group did not join trade or craft guilds at all. These were the seriously wealthy merchants engaged in wholesale and luxury goods trade, particularly with the Low Countries, some of them resident aliens, all of them having moved direct from the purchase of the freedom of the city straight into the urban governing élite. 9 It is not until the leaner economic years of the 7 Alexandra F. Johnston, ‘The Guild of Corpus Christi and the Procession of Corpus Christi in York’, Medieval Studies 38 (1976), 372–84 at 373; Meg Twycross, ‘Forget the 4.30 a.m. Start’, 141. The change was originally proposed by William Melton in 1426, but was not taken up by the City until half a century later. 8 The Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi in the City of York, ed. Robert H. Skaife, Surtees Society Publications 57 (1872 for 1871). My thanks to Meg Twycross for noticing that William Yarm is omitted from the index but included in the published list, registered with his wife in 1427/8; 26, col. 2. For the text of the indenture see REED York, vol. 1, 55. 9 See Meg Twycross, ‘Some Aliens in York and their Overseas Connections: Up to c. 1470’, Leeds Studies in English NS 29 (1998), 359–80, published as Essays in Honour of Peter Meredith, ed. Catherine Batt. York’s governing élite was comprised of the mayor, elected from the twelve aldermen, and two groups of

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later fifteenth century, and the more sophisticated evolution of the trade and craft guilds, that we see this social group volunteering for integration into the local protectionist structures, as signalled by the evolution of the religious confraternity of Holy Trinity into the Mercers’ guild. It is possible that the eventual separation of the pageants, which remained on Corpus Christi Day, from the Corpus Christi procession coincides with the gradual assimilation of this aldermanic group into those groups who had a more direct interest in the production of individual pageants. Twelve mayors of York joined the Corpus Christi confraternity in the first twenty years of its existence. The confraternity of Corpus Christi started with the wealthier members of urban society but grew to embrace the whole lay social spectrum, men and women, as well as a number of local secular clergy. Of those named in the Mercers’ 1433 indenture, Richard Louth is registered with Joan his mother in 1414/15, and his son joined in 1422/23, the same year that Thomas Curtays and William Bedale and his wife are also registered. Nicholas Usflete joined in 1431/32. Both he and Bedale were later to become mayors of York. William Holbek is registered in 1429/30 with Agnes his wife, and a William Holbek nuper major Eboracensis (‘recently mayor of York’) was one of the first keepers of the guild. 10 Henry Market, one of York’s resident alien merchants, is registered with Matilda his wife in 1428/29. 11 Market was one of the executors of Usflete’s will. 12 Later on they were joined by ‘clerks, barbers, weavers, dyers, glovers, capmakers, cutlers, smiths, a pewterer and a female huckster’. 13 Alongside the direct evidence of confraternity membership, there is consistent testamentary evidence of a focusing on eucharistic worship. This coincides with the revival of sacramental orthodoxy which characterised lay patterns of worship from the early fifteenth century. The wills of the York mayors of the early fifteenth century include

lesser importance known as the ‘twenty-four’ and the ‘forty-eight’ from which the aldermen were elected. 10 Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi: see year lists; first appointment of master and keepers which includes Holbek is reproduced 256–8. 11 Meg Twycross, ‘Some Aliens in York’, 72; Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi, 27. 12 The wills of many York mayors of this period are reproduced in full in Latin and in English translation by Robert Bielby Cook, Some Early Civic Wills of York, 8 papers (read to the Yorkshire Architectural Society), offprints [1906–1919] from Associated Architectural and Archaeological Societies’ Reports and Papers 28: 2 (1906) onwards, collected in one volume in York Central Library. For full bibliographical details see Bibliography. Many thanks are due to Catherine Robinson of the Brotherton Library, Leeds University, for researching and supplying these. For Bedale, see paper 8: 10–12; Useflete, see 8: 12–14. 13 Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, 169–80.

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many bequests to the Corpus Christi guild. 14 Nicholas Blackburn Senior, mayor in 1412 and possibly York’s wealthiest medieval merchant, left four huge torches (large candles) for carrying in the Corpus Christi procession for as many years as they might last. 15 He also, according to the guild obits, left them £15. 16 Richard Russell, a merchant and vintner, mayor in 1421 and 1430 and another extremely wealthy man, left the guild 40s among a plethora of charitable bequests (7: 7). John Alstanemore, mayor in 1427, left 20s to the Corpus Christi guild (6: 4), 17 and his brother, Thomas, also a merchant in York and Calais, left 3s 4d ‘to the shrine of Corpus Christi made in York for the procession of that festival’ (6: 10). John Bolton II, mayor in 1432 and the merchant whose family is associated with York’s most famous Book of Hours, 18 left 20s to the Guild of Corpus Christi (7: 11), and William Ormshede, his successor to the mayoral office, in turn left 13s 4d for the shrine, ‘to be made by that brotherhood in York’ (7: 13). Thomas Kirkham, mayor in 1435, again left 6s 8d to the guild in his will of the same year (8: 7). All were, of course, members of the confraternity. Beyond specific bequests to the Corpus Christi guild, however, the testamentary tastes of the early-fifteenth-century urban élite in York show broader patterns of devotion to the Eucharist. Pervasively this takes the form of bequests of wax torches to illuminate various altars, generally in their parish churches. The lighting of the altar was of particular importance for the moment in the Mass when the priest consecrated the Host, and lights also had a general significance for the laity whose chief relationship with the Eucharist was a visual one, as we shall see later. Nicholas Blackburn left torches to illuminate the altar at the moment of the Elevation of the Host all over York and had taken the prudent step of entering into an agreement with a named wax chandler to ensure his wishes were carried out. 19 Only slightly less ostentatious was Russell, whose equally pious will includes 40lb of wax for cierges to burn around his body and 48s worth of torches, and wills ‘that eight of those not consumed shall be given to the high altar, two to 14

All following references to mayors’ wills refer to Cook’s pamphlets by pamphlet number and page, except in the case of Nicholas Blackburn whose will survives in York, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, Prob. 2, fols 605r–606r, and is translated into English in P.J. Shaw, An Old York Church, All Hallows in North Street (York: All Saints’ North Street Church Shop, 1908), 90–2. 15 Shaw, All Hallows North Street, 90–1. 16 Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi, 246. 17 William Holbek who appears in the Mercers’ indenture was executor to both John and Thomas Alstanemore and was left two gowns by the former (6: 7). Alstanemore’s daughter Agnes was Holbek’s wife (6: 5). Agnes Alstanemore, wife of John, also mentions her daughter Agnes Holbek in her will (6: 9). John Alstanemore was in turn one of the executors of Nicholas Blackburn. 18 The so-called ‘Bolton Hours’, York: York Minster Library Additional MS 2. 19 Shaw, All Hallows North Street, 90.

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the altar of the Blessed Mary, and two to the altar of St Katherine in my parish church aforesaid (St John the Baptist, Hungate), to burn there at the time of the Elevation of Christ’s body’ (7: 3). Thomas Esyngwold, mayor in 1423, made provision in his will for a total of 80lb of wax for candles of which ‘two shall remain at the high altar of the same church, and the other four shall remain for the other four altars standing in the same church, to burn at the time of the Elevation of Christ’s body’ (5: 3). Thomas Bracebridge, mayor in 1424 (5: 7), provided for ten torches each of 14lb of pure wax, of which 10 torches I will that 2 shall remain to burn for reverence at the time of Elevation of the most sacred body of our Lord Jesus Christ at the high altar in the parish church aforesaid, the third at the altar of blessed Mary, Mother of God, the fourth at the altar of St John the Evangelist in the same church, the fifth at the altar of St Anne in the said church, the sixth at the altar of St Nicholas in the same church, the seventh at the altar of St James in the same church, and the three others I will be placed singly in a mortise of stone made for that purpose, to burn daily from the Elevation of the sacrament until the priest communicates.

This entry in particular makes clear the demarcation between the laity’s part in the office – as seeing and illuminating to better see – and the priest’s, which entailed physical communion, the ingesting of the Host. Most other wills from this tightly-knit social group contain a comparable element. These devotional tastes, and indeed the formation of the York Guild of Corpus Christi itself, have their place in the ecclesiastical politics of the early fifteenth century. The period was one in which ecclesiastical authority had lately been under sustained threat from the movement which began in Oxford with John Wyclif and his followers’ intellectual enquiry into the validity of certain theological points, but which evolved into the radical religious movement, known as Lollardy, broadly perceived as undermining ecclesiastical authority. The threat derived from two of the conclusions to which Lollardy led: that sacred text should be available to the laity in a language they could understand directly, rather than in the Latin of Jerome which was itself a translation; and that the consecrated Host did not transubstantiate into the Body and Blood of Christ. The effect, if not the intention, of the debate was to call into question the sacramental and interpretative function of the priesthood and reduce it to a preaching and teaching profession. Radical Lollardy also questioned the need for ecclesiastical hierarchy. All this is of course well known, 20 as is the enactment in 1406 For a full history of the Lollard movement see Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).

20

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of notorious and draconian sanctions against convicted Lollards, known as De heretico comburendo, by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel. Subsequently in 1409, and also under the direct aegis of Thomas Arundel, a series of Constitutions was promulgated with the purpose of regulating preaching and thereby the proper and controlled place of the vernacular in lay worship as well as the dissemination of sacred text. The extent to which the archdiocese of York paid attention to matters regulating ecclesiastical conduct emanating from the senior province of Canterbury is something which should perhaps be treated with circumspection. Such is also the case regarding Thomas Arundel’s relationship with his previous archiepiscopal see following his translation to Canterbury. But whatever the precise level of control, the new regulatory framework seems in the case of York not to have imposed constraints in devotional practice; rather the affirmation of orthodoxy was taken up with some inventive energy. Not only was there a return to sacramentalism, but the regulation of the use of the vernacular in acts of worship may also have fed the creative impulse. Certainly the proliferation of devotional writing suggests that other modes, means, and structures were deployed for using the vernacular to disseminate the narrative upon which the laity’s belief system was founded. This is the climate in which the York Cycle evolved as a celebration of Corpus Christi Day. The suppression of Lollardy, as a moment in English devotional politics, found in the North what is perhaps its most creative direct response in Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, presented to Arundel himself in 1410 and the most prominent contemporary text of Northern provenance. From Michael Sargent’s edition we learn that fifty-six complete manuscripts of Love’s book survive, comparable with Hilton’s Scale of Perfection and with Henry Suso’s Horologium Sapientiae. 21 The Mirror is a reworking in English of the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditaciones Vitae Christi. It emphatically affirms orthodox doctrine, with one significant area of addition on the Sacrament of the Eucharist made by Love himself. 22 Love, although not Nicholas Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Full Critical Edition based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686 with Introduction, Notes and Glossary, ed. Michael G. Sargent (Exeter: University

21

of Exeter Press, 2005). Sargent’s edition with its extensive scholarly introduction makes this pivotal work accessible to the modern reader. Sargent and Ian Doyle, ‘Reflections on Some Manuscripts of Nicholas Love’s Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ ’ , Leeds Studies in English NS 14 (1983), 82–93, published as Essays in Memory of Elizabeth Salter, edited Derek Pearsall, follow Elizabeth Zeeman (Salter), in affirming Love’s probable origins. 22 Love, Mirror, introduction 63–75: embedded within this is ‘a formal scholastic statement of the orthodox doctrine concerning the Eucharist’: þe which feiþ is þis in short wordes, þat þe sacrament of þe autere dewly made by vertue of cristes wordes is verrey goddus body in forme of brede,

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of Northern birth, may have been the Augustinian prior of York in 1400 who then transferred to the stricter order to become prior at Mount Grace in 1410. The Meditaciones were originally written for a female religious audience, but in his Proem Love envisages the audience of the Mirror as ‘lewde men & women & hem þat bene of symple vndirstondyng’. 23 It is likely that both the expectation of a wider audience and the dedication to Arundel are later additions recording a ‘positive mandate for publication to edify the faithful and confute the Lollards’, possibly ‘replacing the Lollard gospels’. 24 The English translation of Suso, known as The Seven Poyntes of Trewe Love and Everlastynge Wisdome, also contains a long section on eucharistic devotion very close in many of its details to Love’s additional chapter. 25 Jonathan Hughes proposed that Love’s chapter on the Eucharist was written expressly for the newly formed York Corpus Christi guild, and that he was directly involved in manipulating the Corpus Christi celebrations to his own devotional programme. 26 On the other hand, Michael Sargent, Love’s most recent editor, has been at pains to distance himself from any idea that Love provided direct influence specifically on the pageants. 27 As things stand, there is no substantive evidence for Love’s personal involvement; however, it is unlikely that the authors of the pageants would have been unaware of the Mirror. They were after all clerics who had to work from a common agenda where the assertion of orthodoxy was important, bringing with it a caution in how gospel narrative was glossed for the laity and a concomitant reinforcing of sacramentalism. We should not underestimate how urban social patterns, levels of literacy, and economic differences caused some fissures 28

& his verray blode in forme of wyne, & þouh þat forme of bred & wyne seme as to alle þe bodily wittes of man brede & wyne in his kynde as it was before..’ neuerles it is not so in soþenesse, bot onely goddus flesh & blode in substance, so þat þe accidentes of brede & wyne wondurfully & myraclesly a3eynus mannus reson, & þe comune ordre of kynde bene þere in þat holi sacrament without hir kyndely subiecte, & verrey cristes body þat suffrede deþ vpon þe crosse is þere in þat sacrament bodily vnder þe forme & liknes of brede, & his verrey blode vndur likenes of wyne … (Introduction 65). 23 Love, Mirror, ed. Sargent, 10; see Introduction 38–40. 24 Sargent and Doyle, ‘Reflections on … Love’s Myrrour ’, 82–93. 25 Elizabeth Zeeman (Salter), ‘Two Middle English Versions of a Prayer to the Sacrament’, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen NS 194 (1957), 113–21; for Suso’s text see the edition by Carl Horstman, ‘Orologium Sapientiae, or The Seven Poyntes of Trewe Wisdom, aus Ms. Douce 114’, Anglia 10 (1898), 323–89. 26 Jonathan Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1988) 288–9. 27 Love, Mirror, Introduction 34–5. 28 The almost total absence of bequests from York citizens to the major Benedictine abbey of St Mary’s immediately outside their walls provides powerful negative

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between the vocational religious and the urban laity, but York was not a large place, and it is possible, if not demonstrable, that lay devotional tastes were influenced at some level by ecclesiastical politics. The Mirror as a whole, and the English translation of Suso in particular, certainly supply evidence of how the orthodox were expected to consider the Eucharist and what the celebration of the corpus Christi entailed in the eyes of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. Guild records and wills suggest the popularity of eucharistic worship amongst the trade and craft freemen of York who managed the pageants, and indeed the formation of the Corpus Christi guild itself substantiates that. We also know that this accorded with the ecclesiastical climate, which must have exerted more formal influences on the pageants’ clerical authors, granted that our only surviving texts were recorded some half-century later. The connection between the two lies in evidence drawn from the shared experience of changed patterns and emphases in worship. Echoes of liturgical and paraliturgical material in the texts of the pageants as later recorded in the Register indicate a devotional preoccupation with the Eucharist common to the Corpus Christi guild, with its mixed clerical and lay membership, and the whole authorising milieu in which the pageants were generated and performed. Lay members of the Corpus Christi guild tend to make provision in their wills for altar lights, whether or not they leave money to the guild and the procession. This accords not only with a generalised focus on eucharistic worship, but a particular devotion to illuminating the consecrated Host so that it might be the better seen. The significance of the gesture was first discussed at the Synod of Paris of 1198–1203, and the entry of the Elevation to the Roman Missal was then repeated in the liturgical books of the new Orders, in the Franciscan Missal of 1243 and the Dominican Missal of 1256. 29 It was considered out of the question that the laity should receive communion more than occasionally, so regular eucharistic worship for them focused on the need to look upon the consecrated Host only. Popular manuals of the period attributed all manner of benefits to those who merely looked. It was claimed variously to ensure everything from freedom from oaths lightly sworn to a reduction of pain in childbirth 30 and from toothache, a day’s guarantee of not going hungry, going blind, dying, or even aging, 31 of evidence that relations between City and Church remained strained during this period. 29 Rubin, Corpus Christi, 55–64. 30 John Lydgate, ‘The Virtues of the Mass’ in The Minor Poems of John Lydgate Part I, ed. H.N. McCracken, EETS ES 107 (1911), lines 637–40. 31 John Myrc [Mirk], Instructions for Parish Priests, ed. Edward Peacock, EETS OS 31 (1868, revised 1902), 10.

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finding work easy, and having all sorrows cured. 32 Corpus Christi processions allowed the whole community to gaze beneficially at the Body of Christ as he moved amongst them in the streets. So in terms of the office of the Mass itself, the moment of the Elevation of the Host, not the communion itself, was, for the laity, the liturgical climax. 33 The moment of Elevation was not only, though most crucially, brightly lit, but bells were pealed and incense burnt, while the laity were encouraged to murmur their own particular prayers. All this is closely detailed in manuals such as The Lay Folks’ Mass Book and John Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests, both making clear that the Elevation had become a true substitute for communion for the laity, and that the Mass had become an essentially voyeuristic experience. Contemporary illustrations of the Mass also tend to single out the Elevation of the Host as the defining moment, as can be seen from modest English Seven Sacraments sequences, such as that displayed around the font in the parish church of Salle (Norfolk), to the famous Antwerp altarpiece by Van der Weyden. 34 Fifteenth-century Books of Hours, written for the pious and affluent laity, often go one step further, illustrating the Host miracle known as ‘the Mass of Pope Gregory’, where Gregory is shown kneeling at Mass as the wounded Christ emerges from the altar as from the tomb. But this is not to suggest that the layperson’s participation in the Mass was commonly only passive; Mirk particularly emphasises what is appropriate behaviour at the moment of Consecration or ‘sacring’, the moment at which God descends. Kneeling, raising hands in veneration, and greeting the Lord with a prayer, of which he suggests an example beginning, ‘Iesu lord, welcom thow be …’ (265), are all part of recommended behaviour for the devout. 32 The Lay Folks’ Mass Book, ed. T.F. Simmons, EETS OS 71 (1879), 131, lines 101-36. 33 R.N. Swanson, ‘Problems of the Priesthood in Pre-Reformation England’, English Historical Review 105 (1990), 845–69, especially 855–7, discusses the respective balance of power between clergy and laity in this period of increased focus on the Eucharist: The developments in this relationship centred on the cult of the Eucharist, both as a spiritual and a ‘magical’ event. As only the priest could consecrate, only the priest could ‘make God’. The increasingly mystical element of the Mass, where each vestment, ornament, and action had its own meaning as a reminder of Christ’s earthly life and sufferings, could serve only to elevate the status of the priest as Christ-maker, and increase his separation from the laity … This Elevation of the priest as consecrator clearly meshed with the acceptance of the Host as Christ, which came close to (and for Wyclif was) idolatry. The veneration of the Host was a burgeoning element in the spirituality of the late Middle Ages, which tied in intimately with the developing cult of Corpus Christi. 34 See further Chapter 7 below and Ann Eljenholm Nichols, Seeable Signs: The Iconography of the Seven Sacraments 1350–1544 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994).

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Several texts for these paraliturgical prayers have survived, many of them in the form of lyric verses. 35 Eamon Duffy notes that ‘the prayers invoked Christ not only by his death but by his resurrection, by the descent of the spirit, by his coming again in glory’. 36 Yet the striking factor about the surviving corpus of English Elevation prayers is not so much their rather obvious content, but the degree of consensus in their rhetorical formulation. They all take the form of a greeting, almost always prefaced by ‘Hail …’ or ‘Welcome …’. Christ was being greeted in person as his presence reaffirmed the active bond between heaven and earth, the forgiveness of sin guaranteed by his sacrifice which was about to be re-enacted by the celebrating clergy. The vernacular prayers derive from the non-ritual accretions to the Sanctus of the Mass which take the form of salutations – salves – in a number of manuscripts of Mass and office. 37 A consideration of how the Elevation of the Host was mediated visually and verbally to the laity can take us some way towards understanding the York Cycle’s special relationship with Corpus Christi. This involves moving further from the understanding of the cycle as selective biblical narrative with which we began, and seeing it, from the earliest testimony of the Ordo paginarum to the pageants in the Register, as centring on the sequential and varied enactment of the person of Christ. The audience accustomed to going to look upon Christ in the form of the Host through the eyes of faith and devout imagination, either at the Mass or in the Corpus Christi procession, were treated to less theologically ‘real’ but more directly visually available representations of him in the pageants. The sacred flesh was represented in the flesh, either as a new-born sacrificial infant or as the Man of Sorrows, displaying the wounds of the Passion. If this seems dangerously idolatrous, the spoken dialogue in the Register texts indicates no anxieties of that order, as they mimic the moment when 35 Still the most useful collation of the sub-genre is R.H. Robbins, ‘Levation Prayers in Middle English Verse’, Modern Philology 40 (1942–1943), 131–46. Robbins noted (132–3) that these prayers were quintessentially a vernacular accretion to spiritual literature, being either the only vernacular items in Latin manuscripts, or turning up in miscellanies of what he called ‘household devotions’: levation prayers, then, were primarily a native growth, the result of this emotional need for expression in the mother-tongue of deep personal thoughts by the worshippers rather than mere translations of well-known Latin prayers. See also his ‘Popular Prayers in Middle English Verse’, Modern Philology 36 (1938– 1939), 337–50; ‘Private Prayers in Middle English Verse’, Studies in Philology 36 (1939), 466–75, and ‘The Gurney Series of Religious Lyrics’, PMLA 54 (1939), 369–90. 36 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 120. 37 Andrew Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office: A Guide to their Organisation and Terminology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), paragraphs 511, 513, 514.

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the Host was elevated with fervent prayers of welcome. The shift is one from anagogic representation to mimesis, a distinction which will inform many of the comparisons between the rituals of worship and dramatic representation in the following chapters. There are at least thirty-five separate formal greetings in these texts of the York Cycle which superficially conform to the formulae employed by Elevation prayers. Most are addressed to Christ. Others of course are versions of the greetings Salve Regina and Ave Maria, independent antiphons, similar in rhetorical structure and also echoed by the playwrights, but addressed not to Christ but to the Virgin. 38 Two are addressed to Pilate, and might be thought to derive from greetings for secular rulers in, for example, Royal Entries, and therefore properly have nothing to do with the prayers which invoke the presence of Christ; except that greetings in Royal Entries are generally declarative rather than exclamatory in mode. Henry VII was welcomed into York in 1487, for example, in the following terms: Moste high and mighty . christen Prince and our moost drad souuerain lige lord . your true and faithfull . subgiettes . the Mayre Aldremen Shereffes and Common Counsaill With thool . body of this your Citie in ther moost humbly . Wise Welcomes your moost noble grace vnto the same ./ yeving Due lovinges . vnto . almighty god for the grete fortune noble trihumpe and victory . Which it hath pleased his godhede to graunt vnto your highnesse in subduying your . Rebelles and ennymes at this tyme ... 39

The greetings in the cycle addressed to Pilate do not take this form, but echo precisely the formula employed for greeting Christ already established in the cycle and are, therefore, the more chilling in their effect. The exclamatory greetings which occur specifically at moments when Christ appears seem, in pageants attributable to a number of different hands, to create dramatic moments which are not merely recollective of New Testament history, but which, through paraliturgical mediation, are intentionally analogous to the process of transubstantiation. In the shorter Elevation lyric, the focus is generally on the supplicant, asking for mercy and forgiveness for sins, but in the more elaborate examples Christ’s mystical and paradoxical nature is also explored. An example of the sub-genre which adequately illustrates the rhetorical patterns, range and treatment of subject matter is this earlyfifteenth-century poem from BL MS Royal 17 C xvii:

38 39

Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, paragraph 217. REED: York, vol. 1, 155.

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Hayle Jesu! Godys Sone in forme of bred! Borne of Mary withowtyn syn; þou sawe [save] me, Iesu, fro endeles dede, And þe to worcheppe lat me neuer blyn. Hayle, Almyghty God in Trinyte! Blyssed be þou, Iesu, batte [both] God and Man, in þi mageste Lorde of myght maste. Hayl Hope! Hale Fayth! Hayle Charyte! Stedfastly Lorde I trowe in þe, A God in Persons Thre: Fader and Sone and Hely Gaste. Hayle Lyfe! Hayl Merci! Hayl Hele! Hayle Pese and Pyte! Hayle warra [true] Crystys Flesche and Blode þat flowed oute of þi precyus syde þat Longeus wyt hys spere opuned wyde, Iesu, qwene [when] þou hange on þe Rode. Iesu Cryste of me þou af [have] mercy, And for þi precyus Passyon, Of my trespas þou af [have] pete. In thoght, in worde, in dede, Als I em [am] gylty, Iesu, forgyf my syn. And scheld me. Iesu, euer fra þe Fende; Graunte me scr[ifte]… and howsull at my laste ende; A …. luf of Mary þi blyssed Moder …. frende, Gude Iesu … .Heuen and ay lastyng blys … Amen

The focus is initially on Christ, celebrating aspects of his present, past, future, and perpetual nature by drawing on stock fields of contemplative imagery, but it then shifts into supplicatory mode, drawing attention to the speaker/viewer and his/her plight as sinner in need of the active operation of grace. As we shall see, these ingredients are broadly repeated or manipulated by very similar verse speeches at the significant moments in the cycle when Christ is recognised. The first formal greeting in the York Cycle is, of course, not addressed directly to Christ but is the Ave Maria in The Annunciation and the Visitation (Spicers, XII). Gabriel says: Hayle Marie, full of grace and blysse …

145

The origin of the greeting is the gospel account in Luke 1: 28, but it had developed as a liturgical antiphon for the feast of the Annunciation which we shall return to in the next chapter. While the Englished version in the York Cycle is, therefore, liturgically specific in its own right, within both the rhetorical organisation and the narrative logic of the cycle, its ‘hail’ formula is rendered formulaically proleptic, being followed by: 22

THE YORK CYCLE AND CORPUS CHRISTI

Oure lord God is with þe …

146

This is the first influx of grace, the first occasion on which God is ‘with’, that is in the presence of, humankind. Joseph’s acknowledgment of the prophecy of the Nativity, though dismissed in the long address to the audience with which he opens the next pageant (Joseph’s Trouble about Mary, Pewterers and Founders, XIII), is followed as he enters the Virgin’s house with, All hayle, God be hereinne

75

which is also proleptic, but now additionally is ironic, given Joseph’s state of spiritual blindness. It is The Nativity (Tilethatchers, XIV), however, which establishes the rhetorical pattern for formally recognising Christ. Here the use of this specific paraliturgical interpolation becomes clearest, as one would expect, as the pageant enacts the first moment of God’s real presence on earth. York’s audaciously simple dramatisation of the Nativity, the only cycle pageant in which the birth of Christ takes place before the audience, clearly parallels the Nativity with the consecration of the Host, as Mary greets her newborn son with an Elevation lyric full of the commonplace and characteristic paradoxes: Hayle my lord God, hayle prince of pees, Hayle my fadir, and hayle my sone; Hayle souereyne sege all synnes to sesse, Hayle God and man in erth to wonne. Hayle, thurgh whos myht All þis worlde was first begonne, Merknes and light.

57–63

Here there is a link to be made with Host miracles where the Eucharist is transformed into a babe, notably in the celebrated vision of Edward the Confessor. 40 In the York Nativity pageant, the Virgin Mary is, according to the logic of the piece, a type of priest, able to ‘make God’, the bringing forth that the priest performed sacramentally being what the Virgin achieved physically at the Incarnation. The staging of this episode always presents problems to modern directors and commentators who see it as ‘woman gives birth on stage’ and muse as to why the dramatist chose to deal with the event in this way instead of offering distracting action as the dramatists of other versions of the story elsewhere do. But if we imagine the episode performed with the 40 Aelred of Rievaulx, Life of St Edward, King and Confessor, trans. Jerome Bertram (Guildford: St Edward’s Press, 1990), 71–3. This dimension of eucharistic imagery in English medieval drama as a whole is thoroughly explored in Leah Sinanoglou, ‘The Christ Child as Sacrifice: A Medieval Tradition and the Corpus Christi Plays’, Speculum 48 (1973), 491–509, at 491, but focusing on iconographic rather than verbal resonances.

23

THE YORK MYSTERY CYCLE AND THE WORSHIP OF THE CITY

Virgin kneeling, her back to the audience, producing the ‘baby’ from where it is concealed in her clothing then gently but firmly lifting it above her head with both hands while uttering her words of greeting, in explicit imitation of the celebrant at Mass, the pageant takes on a very particular resonance. Joseph, on the other hand, is more representative of the pious layman, who recognises God’s presence on earth because of a shining light. The connection between the Nativity and light was popularised in the writings of St Birgitta of Sweden: suddenly in a moment and the twinkling of an eye she gave birth to her son, from whom proceeded such an indescribable light and splendour, that the sun could not be compared to it; nor did the candle that St Joseph had put there give any light at all, because that divine radiance had totally annihilated the material radiance of the candle … I saw that glorious infant lying on the ground naked and shining brilliantly. His flesh was completely clear of any kind of filth or uncleanness. 41

There is also an inherent and touching reciprocity between the light spontaneously emitted into the darkness by divinity from the moment of its arrival on earth, and the light painstakingly provided for the consecrated Host by the faithful the better to see God. Joseph, returning to the stable with his meagre candle, as so often illustrated in contemporary Nativity scenes, is in their vanguard. In the York pageant, Joseph greets the infant: Nowe welcome, floure fairest of hewe, I shall þe menske with mayne and myght. Hayle my maker, hayle Crist Jesu, Hayle riall kyng, roote of all right, Hayle saueour. Hayle my lorde, lemer of light, Hayle blessid floure.

106–12

The York Shepherds pageant (Chandlers, XV) is incomplete, but in the section that does survive the Shepherds give the child their presents. They do not use the greeting formula at the obvious moment, which is unaccountable. The Register annotated by Deputy Common Clerk John Clerke in the early sixteenth century frustratingly records, 41

See Meg Twycross, ‘”As the Sun with his Beams when He is Most Bright”‘,

Medieval English Theatre 12: 1 (1990), 34–79 at 45, translating from the Revelations of St Birgitta of Sweden; Revelationes Liber VII, ed. Birger Bergh (Samlingar

utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftsallskapet Series 2, Band 7: 7; Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksells, 1967), 188–9. This article also traces the accounts of emanations of light from the Virgin and Christ at the moment of the Nativity through a number of Latin commentators further to illustrate the association of light with the physical presence of the divine on earth.

24

THE YORK CYCLE AND CORPUS CHRISTI

‘here wantes the conclusyon of this matter’, and it is just possible that the formulaic greeting was part of what the Shepherds sang. 42 Certainly the Shepherds in both Wakefield pageants use it in their speeches. The greeting of Pastor II in the Prima Pastorum particularly illustrates the formula’s power to express succinctly the mystery of the nature of the Incarnation: Hayll, lytyll tyn mop, Rewarder of mede! Hayll! bot oone drop Of grace at my nede! Hayll lytyll mylksop! Hayll, Dauid sede! Of oure crede thou art crop: Hayll, in Godhede! This ball That thou wold resaue! Lytyll is that I haue; This wyll I vowchesaue, To play the withall. 43

674–85

But the visit of the Magi in the York pageant of Herod and the Magi (Masons and Goldsmiths, XVI) provides an opportunity for three striking sequential Elevation lyrics, the first opening thus: Hayle, þe fairest of felde, folke for to fynde, Fro the fende and his feeres faithefully vs fende; Hayll, þe best þat shall be borne to vnbynde All þe barnes þat are borne and in bale bende.

309–12

This pageant, performed on two wagons, provides a good example of how interpolated paraliturgical material works at a dramatic level which reaches beyond individual authorship in the cycle. The whole pageant, with its two locations of action, is given over to movement, as the Magi travel from place to place, and to instruction and debate, until finally it comes to rest, resolved into the formal static image of the giftgiving. This pageant may well be mediated in the cycle by reference to paraliturgical practices associated with Epiphany in York, just as the liturgical celebration of Christmas no doubt exercises influence on the Nativity pageant. 44 The First King’s speech hails the child as defender from the fiend and harrower of hell. He then asks him to remember his people since he has come to earth ‘misseis to amende’. He hails him as king of kings 42 43

York Plays, ed. Beadle, 133 note. The Towneley Plays, ed. Martin Stevens and A.C. Cawley, 2 vols, EETS SS 13

and 14 (1994), vol. 1, 125. All references to the Towneley Plays are from this edition. 44 See Chapter 7 below.

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THE YORK MYSTERY CYCLE AND THE WORSHIP OF THE CITY

who will be king in this place as ‘all clergy has kende’. The whole pattern alternates focus between Christ and the supplicant. The Second King hails him firstly as ‘foode þat thy folke fully may fede’. Clearly in the context of a celebration of the Sacrament of the Altar, the use of the word ‘food’ has a number of resonances. The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that it can mean any kind of sustenance, physical or spiritual, as well as ‘that which is fed, a child, offspring’. Probably nothing more than ‘child’ is intended when Joseph says on his return to the stable, ‘Wele is me I bade þis day / To se þis foode’ (XIV: 90–1). But in the speech of the Second King, we seem to have another one of those paradoxical utterances about the nature of Christ, as that which requires to be fed, as feeder, and as food itself. 45 He goes on to use stock epithets contrasting newness and oldness, mutability and immutability, helplessness and power. He invokes the miracle of Christ’s birth (and, by extension, of transubstantiation), ‘As þe gleme in þe glasse gladly þou glade’ (328), before going on to anticipate the Day of Judgement and to ask for salvation himself. The Third King also invokes Christ’s power over the Devil and asks for personal salvation, but his speech focuses more nearly on the coming Passion. The next two pageants in which Christ is greeted introduce complications, for in these cases the greetings are embedded within action which alludes to and derives from the liturgical treatment of other festive occasions in the calendar, Candlemas and Palm Sunday. The proposition that Corpus Christi, as the quintessential affirmation of the faith, should gather up into it all the other festive moments of that faith’s annual round of celebration does not seem inherently problematic. 46 However, within larger patterns which derive most directly from Candlemas ritual, Simeon in The Purification (Hatmakers, Masons, and Labourers, XVII) embarks on an elaborate set-piece speech of welcome (358–427) in which he hails the baby in the usual manner, as son of the Virgin, son of God, protector from evil, fragrant flower, protector of great and small, rose, unfading flower, comforter, as the

45 Sinanoglou, ‘Christ Child as Sacrifice’, 504–5, connects the image both with the placing of the baby on the altar in Latin liturgical drama of the Nativity, and with the secular Christmas feasting of shepherds in the cycles, which has been explained in terms of the frequent pairing of spiritual and earthly feeding in works of popular piety, notably in explanations of the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’. All these meanings may be latent, but here, because of the form of the presentation speeches as Elevation lyrics, and the conventional ways of venerating the Real Presence which draw on the same form, the analogy with Corpus Christi is made without need to invoke mediating forms and rituals. 46 See further in Part 3 below.

26

THE YORK CYCLE AND CORPUS CHRISTI

Purification completes the sequence in the cycle of scenes which formally recognise the presence of Christ as sacrificial infant. 47 The most arresting sequence of greetings of Christ incarnate in the cycle greets him as a man, at the climax of The Entry into Jerusalem which opens the Passion sequence (Skinners, XXV: 489–544). The form of the Burgesses’ final speeches of welcome contributes to its indissoluble allying of the ecclesiastical and the secular, as Christ is welcomed as prophet, king, physician, salve, Bethlehem babe, balm, ‘comely corse’, lantern, and, ultimately, judge. Then, as the Passion sequence progresses, Judas is to use the same formula to identify and betray Christ (The Agony in the Garden and the Betrayal, Cordwainers, XXVIII: 248–51), it will be abused in greetings to Pilate, and ultimately subverted by Pilate’s soldiers in a speech which depends for its whole ironic force on what has gone before: 48

Aue, riall roy and rex judeorum,

Hayle, comely kyng þat no kyngdom has kende. Hayll vndughty duke, þi dedis ere dom, Hayll, man vnmyghty þi men3é to mende. Hayll, lord without lande for to lende, Hayll kyng, hayll knave unconand. Hayll, freyke without forse þe to fende. Hayll strang, þat may not wele stand To stryve. XXXIII: 408–16

Thereafter there follow a number of similar speeches in the pageants of the Death, Assumption, and Coronation of the Virgin, all addressed to the Virgin and therefore conventional Salves, including those addressed to her by Christ. 49 Particularly the last of these reverses the consecration pattern as earth is welcomed into heaven. It is, however, the final pageant in the sequence, the Mercers’ The Last Judgement (XLVII), where although there are no Elevation lyrics, the logic of the sacramental pattern which they have established is central to the episode’s wider meaning for its community. The Last Judgement works as an enacted Host miracle: corpus Christi does descend among the people and those who are saved are those who, like the members of the Corpus Christi guild, have endeavoured to perform significant corporal acts of mercy. The pageant opens with a reprise of the story of the whole cycle, relating beginnings 47 Simeon’s greeting is part of a more complex paraliturgical movement which will be explored in Chapter 5. The dramatist of this pageant is drawing selectively from the available readings of Candlemas to create a version of the episode which best integrates the resonances of that feast with the feast of Corpus Christi which the pageants exist to celebrate. 48 Richard Beadle first drew my attention to the parodic force of this speech. 49 XLIV: 1–4; XLV: 132–43; XLVI: 37–44, 89–91; XLVIA: 1–6.

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THE YORK MYSTERY CYCLE AND THE WORSHIP OF THE CITY

to endings, the alpha to the omega. After this brief account the pageant contains a half-stanza which suggests that after (sethen) the Harrowing of Hell, ‘in erthe þan gonne he [Christ] dwelle’ (37–40), giving humankind ‘ensaumpill … heuene to wynne’ (38). What is referred to is, logically, the continuing presence of Christ on earth. Angels then stress that everyone should ‘fetch’ their flesh (86). Christ the Judge then descends. The moment of Christ’s descent to earth in this final pageant is clearly spectacular. Immediately before it he says: To deme my domes I woll descende; Þis body will I bere with me – How it was dight, mannes mys to mende, All mankynde þere schall it see.

181–4

His transportation of the wounded body to earth, familiar from the Mass of St Gregory and other Host miracles, 50 reciprocates the reuniting of bodies and souls of the saved and damned, but also enacts for all time and from a heavenly perspective, the moment of consecration of the Host, when Christ comes among his people. In what follows, the doctrine of the corporal acts of mercy becomes a sign of the presence of Christ in the midst of the society of believers. What this initial discussion has tried to open up is the possibility of a refined reading of the York Cycle not simply as dramatised biblical narrative produced as an adjunct to the feast of Corpus Christi, but as a customised celebratory event. The cycle is concerned with celebrating the historical narrative which describes how the Deity took human form, uniting that through a series of paraliturgical echoes with the mystical and sacramental repetition of that historical moment confirmed by the doctrine of transubstantiation. The interpretations of the historical narrative made by the playwrights of the scripts in the Register can be traced to patristic and contemporary devotional writing to which they would have had access, but the same material was also shared by authors and audience alike because of their experience of the forms and patterns of worship. Indeed liturgical and paraliturgical material, teaching and preaching, influence the texture of the whole cycle, from the selection of episodes listed in the earliest records, to the treatment of those episodes as recorded in the Register. We have begun by seeing how specific verbal echoes of a common form of paraliturgical prayer which marked the climax of the Mass for the laity, the Elevation of the Host, are regularly employed by the authors of the spoken texts to draw analogies between the historical moments when God took on flesh, and the doctrine of transubstantiation. These contributions to the overall verbal texture of the cycle accord in turn 50 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 238–40, traces the relationship between this Host miracle and popular devotion to the Five Wounds.

28

THE YORK CYCLE AND CORPUS CHRISTI

with contemporary doctrinal moves to re-emphasise the importance of the Eucharist, something which appears to have penetrated York lay devotional tastes. According to Eamon Duffy, ‘the Host … was far more than the object of individual devotion, a means of forgiveness and sanctification: it was the source of human community’: 51 this is what the York Cycle articulates in its celebration of Corpus Christi.

51

Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 92.

29

Part 2

The Selection and Organisation of the Cycle1 In the last chapter we saw how the York Cycle can be linked to the feast of Corpus Christi. In particular, the cultural moment of its emergence coincides with a return to sacramental orthodoxy, in the form of a reaffirmation of the doctrine of transubstantiation and a vogue for devotion to the Sacrament of the Altar. If we can accept the central motivating focus of the cycle as being essentially sacramental, because of the feast it was devised to celebrate and the devotional climate of its time, we can begin to move away from a view of the organisation of the cycle as primarily biblical. This is not to deny that each narrative episode indicated in the Ordo paginarum and dramatised in the Register is drawn from the Bible and arranged in historical narrative sequence: but the experience of biblical text and story for the fifteenthcentury layperson was very different from that of a lay Christian from the Early Modern period onwards, when printing and the production of cheap Bibles in the vernacular supplied a predominantly Protestant English market with the texts which were central to devotional practices. In the England of the York Cycle, the lay worshipper’s commonest experience of the Bible was one of being read to as an integral part of worship. The organisational time-frame of this reception of biblical texts was not primarily historical but calendrical, as Bible stories were organised as a set pattern of readings in the liturgy. Before we move on, we should perhaps consider just how much of what went on in the church service a York layperson could understand at all because it was, of course, in Latin. The Lay Folks’ Mass Book does not inspire optimism in the Latinity of the average parishioner, suggesting that the layperson should not even try to understand the Gospel reading at Mass but should recite a prayer in the vernacular to him- or herself until it is over. 2 The requirement to concentrate on the repetition of the prayer: Ihesu, myne, graunt me þi grace, and of amendment might & space, þi word to kepe & do þi wille, 1 Much of the material in the following section, particularly in the first and third chapters, is based on Pamela M. King, ‘Calendar and Text: Christ’s Ministry in the York Plays and the Liturgy’, Medium Ævum 67 (1998), 30–59. 2 The Lay Folks’ Mass Book, ed. Simmons, 18; cited in Twycross, ‘The Theatre’ in Blackwell Companion to the Bible and Culture.

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þo gode to chese & leue þo ille, and þat it so may be Gode ihesu, graunte hit me. Amen,

187–92

probably put paid to any possibility of even partial understanding of what was being read. Much would of course depend upon the individual’s intelligence. In The Miller’s Tale Chaucer devised John the carpenter, an urban tradesman whose prayers are superstitious and infantile and who confuses Noah with Noel. Whatever the efforts of the ecclesiastical education system, John evidently was not equipped to benefit from them. 3 However, that Chaucer can make a joke of John may suggest that he is exaggeratedly dense. In the real world, although even the averagely intelligent parishioner may have struggled with worship in Latin, it was well supported by preaching in the vernacular. The fifteenth century was a competitive time for preachers, with friars vying with the parish clergy for audiences (and money), so that in a clergy-ridden city like York the laity would have had to go out of their way to avoid hearing sermons which would have had their topics chosen to harmonise with the liturgical readings in the seasonal cycle. Furthermore, it is now recognised that the urban laity, at least at the level of guild member and freeman, was functionally literate, as anyone running a successful business had to be. The source of literacy was the Church, and elementary education was undertaken by parish priests using the Primer, and whatever other materials were available to them. 4 The Primer was a simplified version of the Book of Hours so the liturgical calendar was fundamental to its organisation. It is likely that well-to-do urban women could read, if not write, too, and again the material available to them would have been largely devotional in content. 5 Michael Clanchy observes that although it was the nineteenth century before utilitarian literacy became a mass movement, it had its origins in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries under pressure from growing bureaucracy. Furthermore, he argues: it is probable that a minimal knowledge of Latin among the population at large has been underestimated. A little Latin was the broad but shallow foundation from which men of

A good single text edition of the poem is Geoffrey Chaucer, The Miller’s Prologue and Tale, ed. James Winny (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

3

1971). The accounts of John’s confusion can be found at lines 375–8 and 725. For comprehensive discussion of the extent and growth of urban lay literacy see Michael Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979; second edition, 1993), especially Chapter 10, ‘Practical Literacy’, 328–34. 5 See Pamela Sheingorn, ‘”The Wise Mother”: The Image of St Anne Teaching the Virgin Mary’ in Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowalski (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 105–34. 4

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THE SELECTION AND ORGANISATION OF THE CYCLE

peasant origin rose to be clerics, and it was also indispensable for literacy in vernacular forms. 6

Clanchy’s evidence is all drawn from the period preceding the massive social change and urban growth of the period following the Black Death, which saw an acceleration of the process he identifies. Many a clever peasant took the opportunity to move to town to engage in one of a range of occupations any of which was likely to have made more pressing demands on the need to be able to read. In the period which followed, there was admittedly a movement away from Latin towards a greater use of the vernacular, particularly in the Lancastrian court, but literacy in general continued to grow, and the means for acquiring it did not change. Add to this the project begun with Archbishop Thoresby’s translation into English for parish priests of The Lay Folks’ Catechism, 7 a York-based curriculum designed to improve precisely the system of lay catechesis that seems to have let John the carpenter down so badly, and we have a situation in which the balance of probability is that any layperson with sufficient brains to achieve the freedom of the city was likely to have grasped the broad sweep of devotional content in the round of worship, and to identify some of its particularities with the time of year in which they came round. The episodes chosen for dramatisation in the cycle, despite their apparently disjointed historical sequencing, draw quite tightly on the liturgy for the period between Christmas and Easter. The cycle’s overarching thematic pattern of Fall and Redemption broadly accords with the content of worship across the major period of alternate feasting, fasting, and feasting in the Church’s year as it is celebrated in liturgical time between Christmas and Easter. Of course not all laypeople attended church every day, let alone at every canonical hour, so would not have recognised every particularity. However, for those engaged in the mediation of biblical narrative to the laity, from the parish priests engaged in basic education and preaching to the shadowy figures who wrote the texts of the pageants, the whole pattern of liturgical reading would have shaped the presentation of biblical text. Moreover the seasonal pattern was reinforced by the sequence of feasts devoted to celebrating individual events in biblical history. It is already recognised that music in the York Cycle owes a debt to liturgical practice; 8 the task in this section is to understand how the habit of liturgical reading impacts equally on the presentation and

6 7

Clanchy, Memory to Written Record, 331–2. The Lay Folks’ Catechism, ed. T.F. Simmons and H.E. Nolloth, EETS OS 118

(1901). Most recently in Richard Rastall, The Heaven Singing: Music in Early English Religious Drama (Cambridge: Brewer, 1996), passim, but especially 121–37 and 250–99. 8

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reception of biblical text in the cycle as an overarching project as well as in the individual pageants which came to make up its component parts. Liturgical reading from the Bible is not sequential, not narrative or historical in focus, but thematic, meditative, and above all recurrent. The reading aloud from the Gospel book at Mass, transforming the written to the spoken word as part of the office, was akin to transubstantiation, as the speaking of God’s word invoked his presence, as the reading unlocked the mystery of the day. The present is, for the whole period after Christ, a period of waiting and witnessing, and witness is borne by repetitious acts of worship. Worship explains particularly the manner in which the pageants seem to understand temporal relationships. They deal not only with the relationship between individual past events, but also the relationship between all past events and the eternal, and the coming together of all past events, through the eternal, with the present. These relationships are in turn central to the understanding of what the feast of Corpus Christi celebrates. 9 Christianity may be a religion which inherited its linear narrative from Judaism and arranged it around a single pivotal event, but this organisational principle is mediated through an essentially cyclic pattern of worship. The recurrent pattern of anniversaries, of divine service, offers a model for measuring time: the numbering of the years, the annual calendar of festivities, and the hours of each day. The matter of biblical text was arranged in a recurrent interwoven pattern of significances which vicariously measured the passage of time. Most of the material in the cycle is associated with the two major festal periods in the Church’s year, around Christmas and Easter. The elaborate mimetic heritage of the Christmas and Easter liturgy and paraliturgical activities involving the laity at these times can explain this apparent concentration. We will return to this in the next section when we consider how Corpus Christi acts as a reprise of other temporal feasts in the calendar. All other material in the cycle – for example the pageants based on Old Testament stories and on events from Christ’s adult life – has the effect of placing the events of Christmas and Easter in a wider historical context. This other material, however, also draws on biblical texts which are read during the intervening period in the Church’s year. Even then the choice is highly selective, the focus being, as we shall see, on theophany, on narrative moments in which the Deity is revealed, just as one might expect, given the overall sacramental focus of the cycle. This period, and those episodes, are the focus of the following discussion as we explore how liturgical habits of reading are key to an understanding of the structure of the cycle.

9 C.A. Patrides, The Grand Design of God: The Literary Form of the Christian View of History (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), 7.

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THE SELECTION AND ORGANISATION OF THE CYCLE

The thirty-three years of Christ’s life between Nativity and Passion are lived out liturgically in the readings in the Missal for the weeks between Epiphany and Palm Sunday. Moreover, in this Septuagesima period, the sequence is complemented in the Breviary by a sequence of Old Testament readings from Genesis at Matins. The Breviary is a liturgical book of a different order, accessed only by the clergy for their daily celebrations, but, given the likely clerical involvement in the generation of the cycle, the complete suite of liturgical books can justifiably be seen as contributing to the cycle’s historical and thematic coherence. For the participating laity, the ordering and selection of episodes was available in a number of other media, from stained-glass windows to Books of Hours, as has commonly been pointed out; liturgical practice merely provides a terminus a quo from which all these popularly experienced and consensual sequencings may be understood. The liturgical placing of the Feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, falling on 25 March, sometimes colliding with the Easter season, follows on from the sequence of Old Testament readings in the Breviary thereby creating a bridge from Old Testament to New as well as concatenating the beginning of Christ’s life with the end and reinforcing symbolic and antiphonal patterns which link the life of Christ and that of his mother in contemporary theology. One third of the pageants in the York Register treat the subjects of texts read as part of worship between Epiphany and Holy Week: I The Fall of the Angels (Barkers); II The Creation (Plasterers); III The Creation of Adam and Eve (Cardmakers); IV Adam and Eve in Eden (Fullers); V The Fall of Man (Coopers); VI The Expulsion (Armourers); VII Cain and Abel (Glovers); VIII The Building of the Ark (Shipwrights); IX The Flood (Fishers and Mariners); X Abraham and Isaac (Parchmentmakers and Bookbinders); XI Moses and Pharaoh (Hosiers); XII The Annunciation and the Visitation (Spicers); XX Christ and the Doctors (Spurriers and Lorimers); XXI The Baptism (Barbers); XXII The Temptation (Smiths); XXIIA The Marriage at Cana (Vintners); XXIII The Transfiguration (Curriers); XXIIIA Jesus in the House of Simon the Leper (Ironmongers); XXIV The Woman Taken in Adultery / The Raising of Lazarus (Cappers) and XLVII The Last Judgement (Mercers). XXIIA and XXIIIA were never registered, although the main scribe of the Register knew of their existence. 10 Richard Beadle, the editor of the Register, observed that: Both the Ordo and the second list of pageants which accompanies it in the A/Y Memorandum Book agree in listing the Marriage between the Baptism (no. XXI) and the

10

York Plays, ed. Beadle, 440, 441.

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THE YORK MYSTERY CYCLE AND THE WORSHIP OF THE CITY

Temptation (no. XXII), whereas the Register has the events in their scriptural order. 11 This discrepancy is just one of the things explained when the pageants are placed alongside the equivalent readings in the service books. The Ordo and the second Memorandum Book list in fact place this pageant in its liturgical order, whereas the Register corrects to a natural narrative historical order, such as would be found in a life of Christ. The liturgical order in which the Baptism precedes Christ’s meeting with the Doctors in the Temple is reversed in the cycle in the same way. With these adjustments, the liturgical texts and the pageants in question fall into distinct groups which will be the subject of the following two chapters.

11

York Plays, ed. Beadle, 440.

36

Chapter 2

From after Epiphany to Septuagesima Epiphany, the celebration of the coming of the Magi, is the great feast which closes the Christmas season. Septuagesima is the seventy-day season which leads up to Easter, incorporating the forty days of Lent. The intermediary period in the calendar is variable, Epiphany being fixed, Easter moveable. Each day there are scriptural readings incorporated into the Mass. Their sequence, recorded in the Missal, 1 is set out in Table 1 (see pages 46–7). The Gospel texts for the first three Sundays after Epiphany relate the Baptism, Christ and the Doctors in the Temple, and the Marriage at Cana, and these provide the subject-matter of York Cycle pageants XXI, XX, and XXIIA respectively. The general theme of the season, and the shift in focus to the adulthood of Christ, is reinforced by the accompanying readings from the Epistles which highlight the nature of human society and, specifically, man’s relationship with the Deity as it was established through Christ’s life. The first of these Epistles, paired with the Baptism, from Romans 3: 19– 26, concerns the difference between divine and human law, the second and third deal with examples of the symbiosis of human society, invoking the imagery of the members of the body to describe universal co-operation as an ideal. When we look at the texts written for the pageants which deal with these episodes from the Gospels, their emphases and preoccupations seem broadly characteristic of this transitional liturgical season. In addition, their demonstration of Christ’s willingness to submit to, and participate in, the ceremonies of the Law, accords with the return to ecclesiastical orthodoxy that the Church was promoting in the post-Wycliffite period during which they were written. The sequence of pageants rectifies liturgical order to chronological order, so that Christ and the Doctors (Spurriers and Lorimers, XX) precedes The Baptism (Barbers, XXI). The Spurriers’ and Lorimers’ pageant in the Register follows the text from Luke 2: 42–52 quite closely in framework, with some dramatic embellishment. In the Gospel account Mary and Joseph are not given distinct actions and reactions to the loss of their son; in the pageant they are contrasted with each other in a

1 Missale ad usum insignis ecclesie Eboracensis (The York Missal), ed. W.G. Henderson, 2 vols, Surtees Society Publications 59 (1874 for 1872) and 60 (1874 for 1872).

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THE YORK MYSTERY CYCLE AND THE WORSHIP OF THE CITY

manner reminiscent of their roles in The Flight into Egypt (Marshals, XVIII). Joseph appears as comforter: Marie, mende thy chere, For certis whan all is done He comes with folke in feere, And will ouertake vs sone

20–4

and purveyor of practical advice: Agaynewarde rede I þat we gang The right way to þat same citee, To spire and spie all men emang, For hardely homward gone is he.

39–43

Mary, by contrast, falls immediately to self-accusation and accusation of her spouse, and to lamenting their loss. Many of her lines are the stock material of the planctus. The liturgical trope known as the planctus Mariae represents the voice of the Virgin Mary lamenting at the base of the Cross. It is to supply the Virgin Mary’s dominant mode of discourse throughout the cycle, again linking pageants of disparate metrical form, while proleptically anticipating the Crucifixion, a moment of departure and loss which is the antithesis of the union between the Deity and humankind celebrated by the feast of Corpus Christi. 2 In Christ and the Doctors, however, the Virgin’s voice also has particular dramatic force as it echoes the voices of the mothers of the Innocents slaughtered in the preceding pageant: Allas, in bale þus am I boone ... My barne is lost, allas þe while ... Of sorowes sere schal be my sang ...

17 32 43

The end of the pageant, particularly the reproaches of the parents, follows Luke 11: 48–52 in almost exact detail. The central section of Christ and the Doctors has no direct gospel source, as Luke gives no account of the subject of the disputation. The York playwright turns it into a lesson on the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments, along with the Fourteen Articles of Belief, Seven Sacraments, Seven Works of Mercy, and Seven Sins, were part of the staple extra-liturgical material which was supposed to be familiar to every lay Christian in the late Middle Ages, the material in which every parish priest had a duty to instruct and examine his parishioners. 3 The didactic tradition derives from canon 9 of a decree by Archbishop John Pecham promulgated by the Council of Lambeth of 1281, known as the There is a fuller examination of the rhetorical uses and sources of the planctus Mariae in the discussion of the Easter liturgy in Chapter 6 below: see pages 152–4. 2 3

A.C. Cawley, ‘Middle English Metrical Versions of the Decalogue with Reference to the English Corpus Christi Cycles’, Leeds Studies in English NS 8 (1975), 129–45.

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FROM AFTER EPIPHANY TO SEPTUAGESIMA

Ignorantia sacerdotum after its incipit. Amongst the many manuals derived from this canon was the so-called Lay Folks’ Catechism, written in 1357 by Archbishop John Thoresby of York. 4 It has been suggested that Thoresby’s project was to urge that a testing of catechetical knowledge should be integral to the annual administration of the sacrament of penance during the Lenten season, and that salvation depended upon a knowledge of the laws of God. The effect was to extend self-examination beyond the simple process of confession. 5 The books are pragmatic manuals which tell the priest what to do and what to teach rather than investigating the theological significance of the items included. Typically the Ten Commandments were central to the pastoral syllabus which appears also to have included the related two Evangelical Precepts – that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and might, and then that you should love your neighbour as yourself – the Paternoster and Creed, the Beatitudes, the gifts of the Holy Ghost, the Ave Maria (and perhaps the Magnificat) and the four Sevens: Sins, Virtues, Works of Mercy, and Sacraments. Moreover, we know that the clergy did indeed engage in catechesis and that the laity was familiar with it. The evidence that they took it to heart and assimilated it into their social culture is there too, because wealthy laymen and women responded by spending conspicuous sums of their own money in sponsoring church decoration and Books of Hours which illustrated its subjects, and in engaging in York’s Paternoster and Creed plays. 6 The schema seems to have developed a standard iconography directed by the 4 See Anne Hudson, ‘A New Look at the Lay Folks’ Catechism’, Viator 16 (1985), 243–58 for the precedence of variant texts and manuscripts. This English verse version of Pecham’s Ignorancia sacerdotum is integrated into Archbishop Thoresby of York’s Register for 25 November 1357 (fols 297v–298v). The English text is, in many manuscripts, attributed to John Gaytrick, a monk of St Mary’s Abbey in York. See also R.N. Swanson, ‘The Origins of The Lay Folks’ Catechism’, Medium Ævum 60 (1991), 92–7. 5 Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries, 153. 6 York’s most striking example is probably the window in All Saints, North Street, sponsored by Nicholas Blackburn Senior, and illustrating a contemporary merchant engaged in performing the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy. York Minster Additional MS 2, the ‘Bolton Hours’, has a number of fashionable catechetical accretions including various systems of repetitive prayers to Mary and to the name of Jesus, the Criss-cross prayer, Pater Noster, Ave, and Creed, and is associated with another merchant family which intermarried with the Blackburns. A close associate of the Boltons was priest William Revetour, noted for having left the now lost Creed Play to the Corpus Christi guild with books and banner pertaining, a play of St James the Apostle compiled in sex paginis (pageants or pages?) to the St Christopher guild, and some properties associated with their Corpus Christi pageant to the Girdlers: REED: York, vol. 1, 68. See further Pamela M. King, ‘York Plays, Urban Piety, and the Case of Nicholas Blackburn, Mercer’, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 232 (1995), 37–50 and ‘Corpus Christi Plays and the “Bolton Hours” 1: Tastes in Lay Piety and Patronage in Fifteenth-Century York’, Medieval English Theatre 18 (1998 for 1996), 46–62.

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THE YORK MYSTERY CYCLE AND THE WORSHIP OF THE CITY

laity at the laity in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the same period in which the mystery cycle was developing into the form recorded in the Register. A.C. Cawley observed that there are two versions of the Decalogue which occur in mystery plays: a version based directly on Exodus, which is used in Old Testament Prophets’ Plays, and a New Testament variant, substituting Christ’s Precepts for the First Commandment, which is used when Christ discusses the Commandments with the Doctors. 7 Cawley suggested in turn that the belief that Christ disputed with the Doctors on the subject of the Ten Commandments arose because the disputation episode had become fused with the account of the two Precepts in Matthew 22: 35–40. The passage tells of Christ answering a ‘doctor of the law’ who asked which were the greatest commandments. 8 It does seem altogether likely that the dramatists were influenced by the stress placed in pastoral education on knowing both the Ten Commandments and the Precepts. Equally to frame the disputation around catechetical material is narrowly appropriate to the liturgical season to which the episode belongs, as Lent was traditionally the period in the Church’s year for the reception of new catechumens, converts to the faith. By the time that the cycle was in production, however, the material of catechesis had been transferred first to the preparation of those getting ready for Confirmation, and then, as The Lay Folks’ Catechism makes clear, to provide the material for the general education of the adult laity. There is also a more general appropriateness in placing basic materials of the faith at a point early in the historical account of Christ’s life, prior to the Baptism, and early in the textual sequence relating to the whole period between Epiphany and Holy Week: it anticipates Lent, which was for all Christians the season of atonement, the refreshing of their faith and Christian knowledge. In the pageant, the first Doctor recites the two Precepts from Matthew 22 and is told by Jesus that in them, ‘Hyngis all þe lawe þat we shall lere’ (161). He who fulfils them, fulfils all. The author of The Lay Folks’ Catechism enumerates and glosses all Ten Commandments, then pauses to make the same point: 9 This ten Comandement3 that I haue nowe rekend Er umbilouked in twa of the godspell, LUCE XO. CAPO. The tane is we love god ouer al thinges, The tothir that we love our euen-cristen als we do oure selven. For god augh us to love halye with hert, With al our might, with al our thought, with word and with deid: Our euen-cristen alswa augh us to loue 7 8 9

Cawley, ‘Middle English Metrical Versions of the Decalogue’, 133–4. Cawley, ‘Middle English Metrical Versions of the Decalogue’, 136. Lay Folks’ Catechism, 60.

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FROM AFTER EPIPHANY TO SEPTUAGESIMA

Un-to that ilk gode that we loue us selven, That is, that thai welefare in bodi and in saule, And cum to that ilk blisse that we think to. Who-so dos this twa fulfilles the othir.

258–68

Jesus then rises to the Doctor’s challenge, and recites the Third to the Tenth Mosaic Commandments. The audience is thus presented with a scene reminiscent of the examination of an adolescent of artisan parents in the basic tenets of the faith, by a venerable body of churchmen such as would be present at a visitation or in a school, but one where this boy can turn the tables on his examiners. In keeping with the sacramental focus of Corpus Christi, this pageant may also be read as alluding to the sacrament of Confirmation. The Council of Trent had urged that a child should not be confirmed until (s)he had attained the age of reason (about 7), and the precocious Christ is, by this standard and by the conventions of the day, rather old for being confirmed. The way in which this pageant clearly illustrates – and to some degree wittily subverts – the whole matter of the instruction of the laity, we will revisit later. The focus on the first two Commandments is, of course, standard New Testament teaching. St Paul urges in Romans 13: 8–10: 8. Owe no man any thing, but to love one another. For he that loveth his neighbour, hath fulfilled the law. 9. For, Thou shalt not commit adultery; Thou shalt not kill: Thou shalt not steal: Thou shalt not bear false witness: Thou shalt not covet: and if there be any other commandment, it is comprised in this word, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 10. The love of our neighbour worketh no evil. Love therefore is the fulfilling of the law. 10

This text is the Epistle for Mass on the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, further supporting a distinctively seasonal thematic reading of the pageant. The next pageant is The Baptism (Barbers, XXI). There are two readings on the Baptism: Matthew 3: 13–17 is read on the Sunday within the Octave of Epiphany, while John 1: 29–34 is read on the Octave. The pageant synthesises these accounts, as do gospel harmonies. In the early Church, the process of preparation for adult baptism took place in Lent, culminating on the Wednesday following the fourth Sunday in Lent, the Day of Great Scrutiny. 11 The practice of examining new catechumens 10

11

Douai-Rheims version, translating the Vulgate: Nemini quicquam debeatis, nisi ut invicem diligatis: qui enim diligit proximum, legem implevit. Nam: Non adulterabis: Non occides: Non furaberis: Non concupisces: et si quod est aliud mandatum, in hoc verbo instauratur: Diliges proximum tuum tanquam teipsum. Dilectio proximo malum non operatur. Plenitudo ergo legis est dilectio. Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, para. 95.

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throughout Lent may have died out after the tenth century, as infant baptism had become the norm, 12 but the extra readings in Lent on Wednesdays and Saturdays associated with it remained in the liturgy, 13 as the period of the year remained associated with instruction in the faith, for both new catechumens and Lenten penitents. Since the Lateran Council of 1215 annual confession followed by Easter communion had been obligatory for all. In the liturgy, however, this was just one of a number of thematic burdens that Christ’s baptism in Jordan carried. It was also an epiphany – epi, ‘above’ and phanos, ‘appearing’ – as the Holy Ghost appeared in the form of a dove and acknowledged Christ as the Son of God, and this is certainly a major emphasis in the Breviary. 14 The Lenten emphasis is also complicated by the fact that the Baptist, as vox clamantis, has already appeared in Advent, which was of course another fast, with the same penitential theme. In more ways than one the episode harks backwards as well as forwards when it finally appears close to its correct narrative position in the story of Christ’s life. The Barbers’ pageant incorporates all the details of the gospel account. The dramatist’s task is further complicated by the fact that he is not only dealing with a historical narrative event in Christ’s life, but also offering a commentary upon the history and nature of one of the sacraments of the Church. 15 This explanatory material is in turn appropriate to the season following Epiphany as an initiation for the weeks of preparation which follow, and in that respect the episode looks chronologically forward. In presenting the descent of the Holy Ghost, however, it also looks backwards to Epiphany, reflecting the continuing emphasis in the liturgy on the Magi. The pageant also looks forward in a number of ways to how Christ, as he approaches his Ministry, will after the end of his time on earth exercise the power revealed at his Baptism for the benefit of humanity. This accords with the ritual in the order of the sacrament of Baptism where the newly baptised is presented with a lit candle and promised eternal life after Christ’s Second Coming. 16 In O.B. Hardison, Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969), 100. 13 Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, para. 909. 14 For Epiphany see further Chapter 5 below, pages 106–17. See Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesie Eboracensis (York Breviary), ed. S. W. Lawley, 2 vols, Surtees Society Publications 71 (1880 for 1871) and 75 (1883 for 1882), vol. 1, col. 167, where the rubric suggests that a mechanical dove might have descended in a similar manner to the star in the Ordo Stellae. 15 The pageant as enactment of a sacrament is dealt with in detail in Chapter 7: see pages 171–3 below. 16 Manuale et Processionale ad usum insignis ecclesiae Eboracensis, ed. W.G. Henderson, Surtees Society Publications 63 (1875), hereafter York Manual and Processional, 17: Accipe lampadem ardentem: irreprehensibilem custodi baptismum tuum; serva mandata; ut cum venerit Dominum ad nuptias possis occurrere ei una 12

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the pageant John prophesies that Jesus ‘schall giffe baptyme more entire / In fire and gaste’ (12–13), which looks forward to Pentecost. Secondly, Jesus confirms in his own voice how this baptism begins the process which makes the defeat of the Devil inevitable: The dragons poure ilk a dele Thurgh my baptyme distroyed haue I Þis is certayne, And saued mankynde, saule and body, Fro endless payne.

157–61

and goes on to promise: What man þat trowis and baptised bes Schall saued be and come to blisse. Whoso trowes no3t, to payne endles He schal be dampned sone, trowe wele þis.

162–5

The reference to the dragon is in fact a quotation from the Breviary for the Octave of Epiphany, demonstrating the author’s very direct debt to the liturgy. 17 The overt connection of baptism and judgement in general contributes to the cycle’s over-arching historical and sacramental structure of meaning. It is similar in creative impulse to a presumably different dramatist’s addition to the account in Genesis at the end of The Flood (Fishers and Mariners, IX), where Noah assures Ham that, although there will never be a second Flood, the world will not endure eternally but will be wasted by fire in the end (299–302). In both instances, the event which is the subject of the pageant is overtly set in a grand scheme of things which is as much doctrinal as historical, and constantly held in mind. Judgement by water in Noah’s Flood is linked to the Last Judgement by fire, and baptism, instigated by John’s Baptism of Jesus as the rite of entry into the Christian life, is presented as essential to the avoidance of eternal damnation. The Baptism is a compromise, inheriting and decorously mediating both the mythic narrative of the gospel account, and the Church’s ritual drama of re-enactment. It has mixed liturgical parentage. Its narrative raison d’être comes from the readings in the Missal, but The Baptism is also influenced by the special service for celebration of baptism, generally available in the separate Manual, but sometimes integrated into the Missal for Holy Week. There is some disruption in the Register version of the text, where John Clerke’s hand indicates, at the point when Jesus’ cue for entry is required, that ‘here wants a pece newely mayd for saynt John Baptiste’. He has also written next to the subsequent speech by Jesus, de novo facto, indicating some sixteenth-century reworking of

17

cum sanctis suis in aula caelesti, ut habeas vitam aeternam et vivas in saecula saeculorum. York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 193. With thanks to Meg Twycross for noticing this.

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the text, although this does not affect the presentation of the central action. The following Gospel readings for the full season between Epiphany and Septuagesima continue to focus on Christ’s Ministry: narrating the choosing of apostles (Mark 3: 6–15 and Luke 9: 57–62) and the manifestation of his divine power in miracles (reputation for healing, Matthew 4: 23–5; casting out devils (Luke 4: 31–7); healing the leper, Luke 5: 12–15; stilling the tempest, Matthew 8: 23–7). The last of these is accompanied by the text from Romans 13: 8–10 on obeying the Ten Commandments. When Easter is early, however, this season immediately after Epiphany need contain only one Sunday before it coincides with Septuagesima. The sequence above presupposes the maximum possible interval of six weeks. The weeks which do not occur between Epiphany and Septuagesima in the calendar of any one year are transferred to the season between Trinity and Advent, the offices being inserted at the beginning of the season, the Masses at the end. 18 Consequently, in every year only the Sunday Masses containing the reading of the Baptism (the Sunday within the Octave of Epiphany) and the disputation with the Doctors (First Sunday after the Octave of Epiphany) will occur, although in a majority of years the Marriage at Cana (Second Sunday after the Octave of Epiphany) will also occur. The evidence of rubricated Sarum Missals also suggests that, where the season was extremely short, the Masses of the first three weeks were compressed into the available period, in which case all three Masses might well have occurred annually. 19 The other texts available for the season would have been encountered in the round of worship with diminishing frequency at this time of year. It is not altogether surprising, therefore, that when the selection of episodes in a cycle of pageants is set against the experience of scripture based on a skeletal model of the calendar, no episodes relate to the variable season. The inclusion of the missing pageant of The Marriage at Cana is, however, accounted for, as in most years the season between Epiphany and Septuagesima would include sufficient weeks for the passage from John 2: 1 to be read. The dramatist would also have been aware that the episode was interpreted as another Epiphany, thought to have taken place a year to the day after the Baptism. Moreover, it also has clear thematic associations with the Eucharist and, thereby, with Corpus Christi. 20 The selection and arrangement of these three episodes, and their relationship to a variable season in the calendar, reveals that the Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, para. 4. Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, para. 136. Both the Baptism and the Marriage at Cana have special status as theophanies in relation to the celebration of Epiphany. This is further explored in Chapter 5: see pages 106–7. 18 19 20

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dramatists were influenced in a number of ways by the liturgy in the detail of each pageant. More germane to the discussion at this point, however, they also begin to reveal how the liturgical calendar influenced which episodes from the life of Christ between Nativity and Passion were included in the cycle at all, and which were not. We will return to that question in Chapter 4, when the life of Christ as represented in the cycle resumes in the Gospel readings for Lent. Before we do that, however, we will see how readings from the Bible as they were arranged in the liturgy for the thirty days before Lent account for the inclusion of a completely different group of pageants in the York Cycle.

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TABLE 1 Readings in the York Missal between Epiphany and Septuagesima KEY: Gospel readings are marked in bold and followed by a brief description of their subject. Where the Gospel episode occurs in the York Cycle, it is underlined. The term ‘Octave’ refers to the week following the feast, that is the eight-day period including the feast. The term ‘Feria’ refers to the weekday, counting including the Sunday, hence ‘Feria 4’ is Wednesday, etc., and the ferial readings are listed only when they change from those of the preceding day.

Day

Epistle/Lesson

Gospel

Sunday within the Octave of Epiphany Romans 3: 19–26

Baptism

Matthew 3: 13–17

Feast of translation of St William of York: Dedit Dominus confessionem

Luke 12: 32–4 ‘Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven’

Throughout the Octave of Epiphany

Miscellany from Isaiah John 1: 29–34 Baptism (‘the Lamb of God’)

Sunday after the Octave of Epiphany Romans 12: 1–5

Luke 2: 42–52 Christ and the Doctors

Feria 4

1 Timothy 2: 1–7

Matthew 21: 28–32 Parable of the man with two sons and vineyard

Feria 6

2 Peter 1: 16–21

Matthew 4: 2–17 Jesus fulfils Isaiah’s prophecy

2 Sunday after the Octave of Epiphany Romans 12: 6–16

John 2: 1–11 The Marriage at Cana

Feria 4

Ephesians 3: 2; Colossians 1: 26–8 Matthew 4: 23–5 Jesus cures many

Feria 6

1 Timothy 1: 15-17

Luke 4: 31–7 Driving devil from possessed man

3 Sunday after the Octave of Epiphany Romans 12: 16–21

Matthew 8: 1–13 Centurion’s boy cured 46

FROM AFTER EPIPHANY TO SEPTUAGESIMA

Feria 4

Hebrews 3: 1–6

Feria 6

1 John 2: 9–13

Mark 3: 6–15 Jesus appoints his disciples Jesus cures leper

Luke 5: 12–15

4 Sunday after the Octave of Epiphany Romans 13: 8–10

Matthew 8: 23–7 Jesus stills tempest

Feria 4

Romans 5: 12–16

Mark 6: 1–6 A prophet not honoured in his home town

Feria 6

2 Timothy 1: 8–13

Luke 9: 57–62 Qualifications for discipleship outlined

5 Sunday after the Octave of Epiphany Colossians 3: 12–17

Luke 4: 14–22 Jesus fulfils Isaiah’s prophecy

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Chapter 3

Septuagesima to Quadragesima With Septuagesima the long preparation for the Passion commences. The extended Lenten season begins at this time, with its emphasis on annual confession. It is, therefore, also a time when the Church renews its affirmation of Christ’s continuing mystical presence through the sacraments. The pattern of readings in the Missal between Septuagesima Sunday and Quadragesima, the first Sunday of Lent, is set out in Table 2 (see page 67). Readings of gospel accounts of Christ’s Ministry continue, but the thematic focus of the readings changes, and begins to look forward to the Passion, with parables and other gospel texts in which the Passion and the Second Coming are overtly prophesied. The early pattern closes on Quinquagesima Sunday, immediately before Ash Wednesday, with the Gospel from Luke 18: 31– 43 which describes Christ’s prophecy of his own death and the performance of the first miracle on the road to Jerusalem. None of this gospel material is dramatised in the York Cycle. However a sequence of readings from the Old Testament in the Breviary for the period between Septuagesima and Quadragesima closely parallels the cycle’s selection of Old Testament pageants. 1 The sequence begins with the Creation on Septuagesima Sunday, followed by the story of Noah on Sexagesima Sunday, and Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac in the ferial responsories in Quinquagesima. On Quadragesima Sunday, the original first day of Lent, the Gospel reading at Mass concerns Christ’s Temptation in the Wilderness, and thereafter readings in the Missal again coincide with the subject-matter of the final group of pageants recounting Christ’s adult life which lead up to the treatment of the Passion itself. Meanwhile the Old Testament readings continue in the Breviary, reaching the story of Moses in the week starting with the fourth Sunday in Lent. The inclusion of materials in the cycle echoing weekday Masses and material from the Breviary argues strongly, if further argument be needed, for clerical authorship. What familiarity the audience of the plays would have had with material from the Breviary is less clear, but 1

The relationship between the liturgy and Old Testament episodes in mystery cycles was discussed in Adeline M. Jenney, ‘A Further Word as to the Origin of the Old Testament Plays’, Modern Philology 13 (1915), 59–64, but has not received much consideration since.

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neither is it particularly relevant. Old Testament stories such as those featured at this point in the Breviary, where all are articulated as commentaries on the parallel Gospel readings, had an established figural significance. The laity was familiar with them because they were invoked by preachers, and had a prominent place in the Church’s public visual environment, such as programmes of stained-glass windows. For example the whole Creation story is told in pictures in York Minster’s Great East Window, a costly and ambitious project undertaken by John Thornton of Coventry in the first decade of the fifteenth century. As early in vernacular drama scholarship as 1913, Hardin Craig pointed out that the Anglo-Norman Ordo representacionis Ade ‘is practically a dramatization of the lectiones [‘Lessons’] and responsoria [‘responsories’] of the week from Septuagesima Sunday. 2 Moreover he argued that Old Testament pageant sequences such as York’s are associated with the Passion because of their liturgical placing just prior to Lent. Thematically and figurally they anticipate the end rather than the beginning of Christ’s life on earth. The Nativity is more properly preceded by the Processus prophetarum, as it is in the words of the Old Testament prophets such as Isaiah, rather than in the events of Genesis, that Christ’s Nativity is foretold. The ways in which the Genesis stories in particular are adapted in the Breviary for the pre-Lenten period can contribute much to our understanding of the treatment of the same material in York as part of the celebration of Corpus Christi. Yet Craig’s argument has been largely ignored by scholarship, as it formed part of the now discredited ‘minster to marketplace’ view of the evolution of the vernacular drama from the Latin drama of the Church. In the Register, no fewer than six pageants tell the story from Creation to Fall – the Barkers’ Fall of the Angels (I), followed by the Plasterers’ pageant of the Creation (II), the Cardmakers’ Creation of Adam and Eve (III), the Fullers’ Adam and Eve in Eden (IV), the Coopers’ Fall of Man (V) and the Armourers’ Expulsion (VI). The source for this elaboration at the opening of the cycle may be the concentration on these episodes on Septuagesima Sunday and the blow-by-blow sequence on the Creation and Fall in the week following. The lectiones and responsoria for Septuagesima Sunday are drawn from four sources: the Creation story in Genesis 1, a commentary by St Augustine discussing how man was created in the image of the Trinity, Gregory the Great’s Homily 19 on the Ages of Man, and from the Gospel text from Matthew 20: 1–16, the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard. The ninth and final Lesson interprets the vineyard as the world. The labourers who come to work there at different times of day, 2 Hardin Craig, ‘The Origin of the Old Testament Plays’, Modern Philology 10 (1913), 473–87, at 484.

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but who all receive equal payment, are those who are born across human time which is divided into five ages, reckoned as the first, third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh monastic Hours and attributed to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Christ respectively. Accordingly these Lessons for Septuagesima Sunday use the parable to provide the unifying understanding of the nature of human time as it relates to the eternal, as well as providing a model for splitting up the Creation into temporal segments. With this a particular pattern is set which is elaborated in the following ferial (weekday) Lessons and in the subsequent weeks leading up to Ash Wednesday. In what follows we will look at the corresponding York pageants one by one to see how their sequencing and contents reflect the pattern of liturgical reading. The guild variously known as the Tanners or Barkers was responsible for the production of the first pageant. In the Register this pageant focuses on the Fall of the Rebel Angels. In the earlier Ordo paginarum it apparently focused on the Creation. This reads: Deus pater omnipotens creans & formans celos angelos & archangelos luciferum & angelos qui cum eo ceciderunt in infernum ‘God the Father Almighty creating and shaping the heavens, the angels, and archangels, Lucifer, and the angels who fell with him into Hell’

and the second shorter list reads, Creacio celi et terre (‘Creation of Heaven and Earth’). This need not represent the shift in focus that it may at first seem to, however, as most commentators subsume the creation of the Angels under the creation of light (Genesis 1: 3) and the separation of the Good from the Rebel Angels under the separation of the light from the darkness (Genesis 1: 4). The initial presentation of God and his Creation in the pageant in the Register has a number of interesting theological properties even before the addition of extra-biblical material concerning the creation of the Nine Orders of Angels and the subsequent Fall. 3 The first stanza is spoken by a (probably) masked actor formally representing the Creator, traditionally the Second Person of the Trinity. It establishes the properties of the Godhead. If the cycle denotes all sacred history, this speech establishes the relationship between sacred history and eternity, ‘God’s time’. The opening line of the pageant, and of the whole cycle, is in Latin, the language of the liturgy being God’s language, and is adapted from Revelation 1: 8. 4 It connects the beginning of the world to See Richard Beadle, ‘Poetry, Theology and Drama in the York Creation and Fall of Lucifer’ in Religion in the Poetry and Drama of the Late Middle Ages in England,

3

ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Cambridge: Brewer, 1990), 213–27. 4 Ego sum A et Ω principium et finis dicit Dominus Deus qui est et qui erat et qui venturus est Omnipotens.

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the end: Ego sum Alpha et O: vita, via, veritas, primus et novissimus. The stanza which follows is effectively an English gloss on this: I am gracyus and grete, God withoutyn begynnyng, I am maker vnmade, all mighte es in me; I am lyfe and way vnto welth-wynnyng, I am formaste and fyrste, als I byd sall it be. My blyssyng o ble sall be blendyng, And heldand, fro harme to be hydande, My body in blys ay abydande, Vnendande, withoutyn any endyng.

1–8

The endings of the first and last lines propose that the represented events are not just part of historical time, but of all time and of time now. In the York Cycle, the historical sequence of the Creation as set out in Genesis 1 is reserved for the second pageant; this first pageant has a different primary function. It establishes the relationship between the historical narrative that will follow and the eternal. The feast of Corpus Christi commemorates a similar relationship between the literal and the anagogical, celebrating the transmigration of the eternal Godhead into mundane matter through the mystery of the Mass. God’s first speech also mirrors in organisation the relationship between the synoptic focus of Septuagesima Sunday and that of the following weekday readings which tease out the Creation narrative further. The way in which the pageant deals with time is reflected also in its treatment of space. The speech of Deus demands action. The space surrounding him, first described as ‘nought’, opens out to reveal heaven, then earth, then hell. What the audience is faced with at the end of the pageant on the vertical space of this first wagon, is a morally inflected map of the universe, in which heaven, high, is good; hell, low, is bad; and middle-earth lies between, with a potential for either good or bad. The first pageant functions connotatively, therefore, to collapse together the universal and the particular in a way that characterises not only Christian literature, but is fundamental to medieval Christian thought and sacramental theology. It also proposes a reading of the Old Testament through the New which extends beyond the specifics of typologically paired episodes to establish Christian history as man-, and therefore, Christ-centred. The first three readings in the Breviary for Septuagesima Sunday have an interestingly analogous synoptic quality. They begin with a straightforward narration of Genesis 1: 1–11, omitting the sequence of days. The accompanying responses from the beginning, however, leap forward to anticipate the creation of man, so that while the reading tells how God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning, the Response tells how he made man on the earth from the dirt of the ground and breathed the spirit of life into him:

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First reading In the beginning God created heaven, and earth.

And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. And God said: Be light made. And light was made. And God saw the light that it was good; and he divided the light from the darkness. And he called the light Day, and the darkness Night; and there was evening and morning, one day. Response In the beginning God made heaven and earth; and created man into them, in his image and likeness. Versicle And so God formed man from the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life. 5

The parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, the Gospel text for Mass on the same day, is also fundamentally concerned with time, connecting, as the author of the Middle English Pearl demonstrated, the individual’s participation in grace with original sin and with the history of all human time. The extract from Gregory the Great’s sermon at the seventh Lesson makes plain that the vineyard stands for the world, with something of Eden but also of the nexile described in the York Barkers’ opening speech, 6 and the labourers who come at the end of the day are those who are born towards the end of the world. 7 In fact the whole sequence of readings focuses not on the sequential stages of Creation but, from the outset, on the Creation as the provision of a fitting location for mankind, to be made in the image of God. The opening of this narrative of beginnings, in the cycle as much as in the pre-Lenten liturgy, carries the burden of known endings, the morning and the evening of the day, the Alpha and the Omega. The Response to the final Lesson for Septuagesima Sunday is the accusation Ubi est abel, (‘Where is Abel?’), anticipating that the path from beginning to ending will form a pattern of Fall as well as Redemption, alienation then reunion. As we shall see, the antiphons on the following 5

York Breviary, vol. 1, cols 231–2: Lectio i: In principio creavit deus celum et terram: terra autem erat inanis et

vacua: et tenebre erant super faciem abyssi: et spiritus domini ferebatur super aquas. Dixitque deus. Fiat lux. Et facta est lux. Et vidit deus lucem quod esset bona: et divisit lucem a tenebris. Appellavitque lucem diem: et tenebras noctem. Factumque est vespere et mane dies unus. Re. In principio fecit deus celum et terram: et creavit in ea hominem: Ad imaginem et similitudinem suam. V. Formavit igitur dominus hominem de limo terre: et inspiravit in faciem ejus spiraculum vite. 6 Play I: 25: nexile, ‘annexe’, from Med. Lat. axilla, ‘little wing’, as in aisle. Deus refers to earth as both nexile and ile, which suggests a stage area apart from heaven. 7 York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 234: Patrisfamilias similitudinem fratres nemo alius tenet nisi redemptor noster: qui regit quos condidit et electos suos sic possidet in hoc mundo quasi subjectos dominus in domo. Qui habet vineam universam scilicet ecclesiam que ab abel justo usque ad ultimum electum qui in fine mundi nasciturus est: quot sanctus protulit: quasi tot palmites misit.

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Thursday to Saturday use Matthew 20: 16, from the Gospel for Septuagesima Sunday – Erunt novissimi primi et primi novissimi (‘the last shall be first and the first last’). 8 The liturgical echo suggests that mankind’s position in the divine plan relates to God’s as primus et novissimus, the first and the last (literally the ‘most new’), although the implications for mankind are that only the few will share God’s eternity. The Barkers’ pageant, therefore, shares the liturgy’s proleptic approach to setting the narrative of Creation. This is then embellished by an account of the Fall of the Rebel Angels, whose biblical source comes not from Genesis but from Revelation 12: 7–9, supplemented by Isaiah 14: 12–15, Jude 1: 6, and Luke 10: 18. Adeline Jenney, following Craig, pointed out that this element in the Creation narrative is mediated and integrated into the Genesis story by readings from St Augustine. 9 Certainly Augustine is the major source for the acceptance of the Fall of the Angels into canonical accounts of the Creation. In De Civitate Dei Book 11, he links the myth with the separation of light from darkness, and in Confessions Book 11 he writes of it as a cosmic disaster that postdates the existence of God who is eternal, but lies outside linear time. Angels are somehow balanced between time and the eternal and mythically bound up with the establishment of good and evil as moral constants. 10 However, although this may be the case in other, postTridentine, breviaries, the York Breviary is silent on the subject. 11 We must assume that the dramatist derived his inspiration for this element in the pageant, settled as it was in the theological understanding of the narrative of the Creation, from elsewhere. 12 In the pageant the newlycreated Nine Orders of Angels sing the Te Deum and follow the long York Breviary, vol. 1, cols 243–4. There is a minor complication in this edition; on the Friday the first and the last are reversed: Erunt primi novissimi … But the Gospel text is as above, and one can only assume a mistake. See also note 14. 9 Jenney, ‘A Further Word’, 63. 10 Recognising the effects of the Augustinian view of time is of course not new; see further e.g. Patrides, The Grand Design of God; Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (London: Duckworth, 1983); Trygve R. Tholfsen, Historical Thinking (New York: Harper Row, 1967), as well as V.A. Kolve’s ground-breaking study of the vernacular cycle drama, The Play Called Corpus Christi. Only Tom F. Driver, The Sense of History in Greek and Shakespearian Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), however, has accorded much attention to how Augustinian thought in this area was mediated into the arts and literature through the forms and patterns of worship. 11 It is unclear which version of the Breviary Jenney was working with, as the subject is not dealt with in York, Sarum, nor the later Roman rite. 12 The Fourth Lateran Council had decreed in 1215 that, Diabolus enim et alii dæmones a Deo quidem naturâ creati sunt boni, sed ipsi per se facti sunt mali (‘the Devil and the other demons were created by God good in their nature but they by themselves have made themselves evil’). See New Catholic Encyclopaedia, 17 vols (New York etc: 1967–1979), sv Devil; 1907–1912 edition on-line as The Catholic Encyclopaedia, at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04764a.htm. 8

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opening speech of Deus with a sung Sanctus, before embarking on an antiphonally-arranged dialogue consisting of correctly directed and misdirected praise. Despite the absence of a direct liturgical source, the mode and texture of the verse throughout this section of the pageant is fundamentally liturgical in its resonances prior to Lucifer’s fall. The Plasterers’ pageant of The Creation is described in the Ordo paginarum short list as Operacio quinque dierum, (‘the work of the five days’). This, the second pageant, is a monologue from Deus, which opens with a recapitulation of the Fall of the Rebel Angels followed by a relatively straightforward account of the work of the five days. In the liturgy the works of days one, two, and part of three provide the first, second, and third Lessons for Septuagesima Sunday. The third Lesson breaks off at the end of Genesis 1: 11. It is followed by a response which suggests an interim completeness, the earth and the heavens perfected and everything good. 13 The response, therefore, collapses the narrative of the third to seventh days in preparation for the Augustinian material and the Gospel. But the works of the days of Creation are then revisited in the following weekday readings. The first Lesson for the second weekday picks up the story at Genesis 1: 12, and ends the account of the third day. The second and third Lessons for that day recount the works of the fourth day, the creation of the sun, moon, and stars, and the division of day from night. The works of the fifth day, the creation of fishes, birds, and beasts, provide the first and second Lessons for the third weekday. The third Lesson is taken from Genesis 1: 24, the bringing forth of living creatures. This is followed at Vespers by a recapitulation of the Gospel text, Matthew 20: 13, recollecting that the sequence of coming to the vineyard is irrelevant to the payment. In the pageant the work of the first two days is similarly compressed into the third and fourth full stanzas, whereas the works of the third and fourth days are given three stanzas each, the fifth day four stanzas. Consequently this simple pageant conforms closely to the two sets of weekday readings. The Creation of Adam and Eve, the subject of the subsequent pageant, is correspondingly separate in the Breviary as the material for the Lessons on the fourth weekday, when there is also a change to the Gospel text at Mass to Mark 9: 29–36 (Vulgate). 14 There are two 13

York Breviary, vol. 1, cols 232–3: Re. Igitur perfecti sunt celi et terra et omnis ornatis eorum: complevitque

deus die septimo opus suum quod fecerat. Et requievit ab omni tempore quod patrarat. V. Viditque deus cuncta que fecerat et erant valde bona. Et requievit. Gloria patri. Et requievit. 14 This is one of the apostolic accounts of Christ’s prediction of his Passion to his disciples, and includes his promise that whoever seeks to be greatest should be aware that the last will be first and the first last (Mark 9: 34, Vulgate). It concludes by telling how he took a child and said that whoever received a child received him, and

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accounts of the creation of mankind in Genesis, commonly read as one: Genesis 1: 26–8 tells how, on the sixth day, God made man and woman in his own image and gave them dominion over the world, then in Genesis 2 the older narrative describes how Adam was made from the earth and Eve from his rib. Rivers are named – something important in the liturgy, but omitted from the pageant – Eden provided, and the Tree of Knowledge proscribed. It is in Genesis 2 that Adam is given a voice, as he names the animals and acknowledges Eve as flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone (2: 23). The Fall of Man follows in Genesis 3. In the Breviary, the focus of the Lessons for the fourth weekday is the completion of the sixth day of Creation, which includes the forming of man and woman in God’s own image, with antiphons reverting to Matthew 20: 23, reiterating the covenant between the keeper of the vineyard and the recalcitrant labourer. The fifth weekday then moves from Genesis 1 to 2, recounting the seventh day, the completion of the project of Creation, and moving on in the third Lesson to the account of the creation of Adam at 2: 7, picking up and expanding the Sunday versicle: Therefore God made man from the dirt of the earth: and he breathed into the making of him the spirit of life, and man was made into a living creature. Then the Lord God planted a paradise of delight from the beginning in which he placed man whom he had made. 15 The antiphon is taken from Matthew 20: 15 and 16, which concludes the parable with the reminder that God may do what he wants with what is his and that many will be called but few chosen. The sixth weekday in Septuagesima then focuses on the account of the Tree of Knowledge and of the naming of the rivers in Eden. The antiphon unites several gospel texts on the same theme, since Matthew 20: 16, Sic erunt novissimi primi et primi novissimi (‘So shall the last be first and the first last’), is virtually identical to Mark 9: 34 (Vulgate) and Matthew 19: 30 (both in answer to the disciples expecting a reward for their apostleship), followed by multi enim sunt vocati: pauci vero electi (‘For many are called but few chosen’). The weekday responses continue the proleptic pattern established on Septuagesima Sunday with its collapsed narrative of the Creation and Fall of Man. Here, for much of the time, the voice of God and the voice of Adam operate antiphonally in response and subsequent versicle, first with Genesis 2: 21–2, where God causes Adam to fall into whoever received him received him that sent him. The theme, therefore, broadly continues what was established in the parable text for the preceding Sunday. 15 York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 243: Formavit igitur deus hominem de limo terre: et inspiravit in faciem ejus spiraculum vite: et factus est homo in animam viventem. Plantaverat autem dominus deus paradisum voluptatis a principio in quo posuit hominem quem formaverat.

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a deep sleep, followed in the versicle by 2: 23, Adam’s voice acknowledging Eve as his flesh and bone. Then God, walking in the garden in the cool of the day, calls out asking Adam where he is, 3: 8 (first part only) and 9, and Adam replies in the versicle from 3: 10, that he was afraid and naked, so hid himself. Then Genesis 3: 19 and 18 are adapted as God’s curse on Adam, and the versicle follows with part of 3: 17, then 3: 22 as God acknowledges that Adam has ‘become one of us’ with knowledge of good and evil. In a final versicle, adapted from Genesis 3: 24, cherubim drive Adam and Eve from the garden. The subsequent psalms and antiphons are penitential, recapitulate the Gospel reading, and are set for the whole period to Ash Wednesday. Liturgical reading as it is presented in this section of the Breviary is not driven by sequential narrative telling. The properties and demands of the large patterns of periodic worship are cyclical and recurrent, overriding the linear and historical; so too each day’s liturgy has a thematic construction which it returns to every Hour so that, at the micro-level, narrative moves forward in eddies. There is no implied tension in this requirement, however, since the Augustinian view of history was providential, and required thematic recurrence as the meaning of each discrete event carried its figural burden. It is characterised by the antiphonal use of voices, as Lesson, response, and versicle look at events and their outcomes all at once at this micro-level. This makes narrative telling a constantly recursive process that moves between beginnings and endings, working with certain individual verses. The pattern is then interspersed with psalmody which is wholly lyrical rather than narrative in mode. The pattern of Lessons from Genesis celebrating Creation, but modified by responses presaging the Fall, reinforced by the psalms, is broadly elegiac. This is balanced, however, by the promise which is inherent in the Gospel texts, and affirmed through the words of the Magnificat, repeated daily as part of the office, promising the ultimate exaltation of the humble. The York pageants of The Creation of Adam and Eve (III, Cardmakers), Adam and Eve in Eden (IV, Fullers), The Fall of Man (V, Coopers), The Expulsion (VI, Armourers), and, indeed, the now incomplete Cain and Abel (VII, Glovers), deal with the narrative from Genesis 1: 26 to 4: 15. This seems a remarkable concentration in the cycle until one recognises that it is also the material of the whole of the week of Septuagesima. It establishes thematically, through the medium of the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, the broken covenant between God and Adam, and the nature of the new covenant. The latter is grounded in the Lenten themes of penance and reciprocal forgiveness. It is a covenant whereby the last will be first and the first last in the eyes of a God who is both first and last, beginning and ending. The Cardmakers’ and Fullers’ pageants, moreover, draw on the Lessons in the weekday liturgy, expanding the Creation story, whereas the Coopers’ and Armourers’ pageants draw their material more from 56

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the responses and versicles for the season, which concentrate on the Fall of Man. All these pageants are short but have carefully constructed openings which summarise the, equally short, story so far. No doubt this was the way in which the actors warmed up the audience in each case, but recursiveness, like prolepsis, also characterises the manner in which liturgical telling takes place. There are moments too when the pageant text itself shows the very obvious influence of liturgical telling. For example, as the Cardmakers’ Deus makes Adam he reflects and explains: Off þe symplest part of erthe þat is here I sall make man, and for þis skylle: For to abate hys hauttande chere, Bothe his grete pride and oþer ille; And also for to haue in mynde How simpyll he is at hys makyng, For als febyll I sall hym fynde Qwen he is dede at his ending, 24–32 in which the beginning contains a reflection on the ending that is very much the pattern of the liturgical account. What the pageants add to the liturgical reading, as with the early dramatic Fall of the Angels and the later characterisation of Noah’s wife, is dramatic material drawn from other sources. In this case there is the dialogue between Eve and the serpent, which is nowhere mentioned in the liturgy. The Armourers’ pageant initially seems most redundant in the Creation and Fall sequence, as the Cherub has already effectively expelled Adam and Eve from Eden at the end of the preceding pageant. On the other hand, Adam and Eve’s voices are raised in a sustained dialogue of regret and penance for their disobedience to God. Adam’s voice in particular resonates with the burden of one man’s sin that is also Original Sin, with an emphasis consonant with the need for atonement: Allas, for bale, what may þis bee? In worlde vnwisely wrought haue wee, This erthe it trembelys for this tree And dyns ilke dele! Alle þis worlde is wrothe with mee, Þis wote I wele. 111–15 The incomplete pageant headed Sacrificium Cayme et Abel in the York Register is missing the section in which both make their offering and in which Abel is murdered by Cain. These pages seem to have gone missing around the time when John Clerke was working on the Register. 16 What remains throws into relief, albeit fortuitously, the thematic relationship between the early Genesis story and the 16

See York Plays, ed. Beadle, 76, for an account of the manuscript evidence.

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Septuagesima Sunday Gospel text of the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard. The pageant opens with an angel offering a reprise of the preceding pageants, but this time it is addressed to Cain and Abel as a clear account of God’s power to reward and punish, of man’s obligations, and of the double Fall that resulted from pride. In their subsequent dialogue, Abel and Cain’s antiphonally opposed voices are reminiscent of the good and bad angels of the first pageant. Unlike the Chester or the Towneley pageants on the same subject, there is no attempt to construct motive for their contrasting responses to the Angel’s command; Abel answers obediently and Cain answers in anger. When action resumes after the missing section, there is the tantalising end of a dispute between Cain and Brewbarret, a post-Reformation embellishment to the story, followed by a dispute between the Angel and Cain as the curse is delivered. There is little of the story in the liturgy beyond the final response on Septuagesima Sunday, Ubi est

Abel frater tuus dixit dominus ad cayn … et suscepit sanguinem fratris tui de manu tua (‘And the Lord said to Cain: Where is thy brother

Abel … received the blood of thy brother at thy hand’), 17 structurally paired with the weekday responses’ emphasis on Adam ubi es? (‘Adam, where art thou?’). But the Gospel message Ite et vos in vineam meam: et quod justum fuerit dabo vobis (‘Go you also into my vineyard, and I will give you what shall be just’: Matthew 20: 4) and the repetition of the Magnificat set up a pattern by which it is made clear that obedience to God will be rewarded and recalcitrance punished, for which the story of Cain and Abel is the object lesson. The Gospel text at Mass for Sexagesima Sunday is Luke 8: 4–15, the parable of the Sower, and the Old Testament narrative in the Breviary moves on to tell the story of Noah. 18 The emphasis is on covenant between God and man, with the repeated antiphon ponam arcum meum in nubibus celi (‘I will set my bow in the clouds’: Genesis 9: 13). The Lessons and responses again select from and reorganise the story of Noah from Genesis 6, 7, and 8 in a pattern similar to that of the preceding Sunday. The Lessons are based first on 5: 32, the conception of Noah’s sons, followed by 6: 1–2, which describes how daughters were conceived as mankind began to procreate and men chose their wives, then continues at 6: 3–4 in which God declares that his spirit will not remain in man for ever, followed by the account of the race of giants which then inhabited the world. Then the third Lesson continues to tell of God’s regret at having made man, drawing on 6: 5–7. The fourth, fifth, and sixth Lessons are taken from a sermon of Chrysostom, on the Fall of Man. These readings emphasise that man was made from God’s substance and innocence, but was instructed in prudence and 17 18

York Breviary, vol. 1, cols 235–6, from Genesis 4: 9–11. York Breviary, vol. 1, cols 244–55.

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endowed with reason. The Devil, however, persuaded incautious man to break God’s injunction, so man lost everlasting life. The parable of the Sower is then read at the third Nocturn, followed by a sermon on it by Gregory the Great which occupies the seventh, eighth, and ninth Lessons. The whole emphasis here, linking the Gospel text and the Old Testament narrative through the Sower metaphor, is on taking the word of God to heart, like the seed that fell on fertile ground, and on perfect versus corrupt generation: Noah is perfect in his generation so a reciprocal covenant is possible in the race of men founded upon his seed, who carry the word of God in their hearts. The story resumes in the responses with 6: 13 where God announces his intention to destroy the earth. Two things emerge from the organisation of events in the Breviary. Firstly, as at Septuagesima, the Old Testament story is organised thematically to underscore the message of the Gospel text. The Sunday readings are synoptic, focusing on 6: 14, the instruction to build the Ark; a summary of 7: 12–13, giving a brief account of the Flood; then 7: 17–18 which tells of the Ark being borne upon the waters for forty days and nights; and ending with the account of the dove’s return. The weekday readings then retell the story adding more detail. For example, on the second weekday, the mystery of the Ark’s dimensions is underscored in the antiphons, and cross-referenced to the Gospel text. 19 The fourth weekday concerns the instructions on bringing the animals into the Ark, and the events of the Flood then occupy the Lessons on the fifth and sixth weekdays. Secondly, and throughout the whole week, the material in the responses runs ahead of that in the Lessons, creating a balance of effect followed by cause. The weekday readings place detailed emphasis on good and bad generation, so the selection of Noah and the instructions for the building of the Ark are given particular prominence. The events of the Flood do not enter the Lessons until the fifth weekday, but are there in the responses from Sunday onwards, with the weekday responses paying particular attention to the covenant. The Sower theme is taken up by allusion in the weekday responses which concentrate on the rainbow as covenant, but refer to the progeny of Noah, the just and obedient man whose seed, as the final response emphasises, was worthy of saving. 20 York Breviary, vol. 1, cols 251–2: Vobis datum est nosse mysterium regni dei: ceteris autem in parabolis dixit Jesus discipulis eius, And from the Gospel text: Semen est verbum dei: sator autem Christus: omnis qui audit eum manebit in eternum. 20 York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 249: Noe vir justus atque perfectus cum deo ambulavit. Et fecit omnibus quecunque precepit ei deus 19

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Two pageants cover this material in the York Register: The Building of the Ark (Shipwrights, VIII), and The Flood (Fishers and Mariners,

IX). Clearly a strong case can be made for there being civic reasons for this division, as the two guilds are so appropriate to their respective pageants. 21 The two pageants also, however, divide the account in the way that it is divided in the Breviary. The Building of the Ark emphasises God’s intention to make the world anew, recollecting Gregory’s sermon on the Ages of Man referred to in the ninth Lesson for Septuagesima Sunday. The instructions on the building of the Ark are then set out in exact detail in the following action. Of course the dimensions of the Ark had been variously figurally interpreted in patristic commentary, 22 understood as carrying particular mysterious significance comparable with Christ’s words when he spoke in parables. What the pageant suggests, in incorporating into this narrative a number of vernacular terms from the shipwrights’ craft, is a sanctification of that special language too, as handed down to Noah as God’s chosen shipwright. Noah ends the pageant by saying: Abowte þis werke now bus me wende With beestys and fewlys my shippe to fill. He þat to me þis Crafte has kende, He wysshe vs with his worthy wille.

148–51

The York pageant of The Flood opens with the end of the story of the generations of Adam by reference to Noah’s father Lamech, seven times more damned than Cain, and the prediction (Genesis 5: 29) that Noah would be a comforter for those who lived in the land which the Lord had cursed. The action which follows is embellished with the traditional burlesque material whereby Noah’s wife refuses to enter the Ark. This material, also found in the Chester and Towneley pageants, has been variously explained. 23 Noah’s wife’s disobedience forms no and the versicle, Fecit sibi archam noe ut salvaret universum semen eius. 21 See Richard Beadle, ‘The Shipwrights’ Craft’, in Aspects of Early English Drama, ed. Paula Neuss (Cambridge: Brewer, 1983), 50–61. 22 E.g. Hugh of St Victor’s De Arca Noe Morali, in which the 300 cubits are interpreted as the three periods of history: natural law, written law, and grace; the 50 cubits as all believers with Christ at their head; the 30 cubits, the 30 books of the Old and New Testaments; three storeys as three grades of human life, and Noah’s 100 years as the period of grace: see Rosemary Woolf, English Mystery Plays (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), 136. Gregory the Great saw the Ark as a pyramid, which is how it is often represented in art, a symbol of the Church in which many are carnal, a few spiritual, and Christ is at the apex: see G. McN. Rushforth, Medieval

Christian Imagery as illustrated by the Painted Windows of Great Malvern Priory Church, Worcestershire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), 161–2.

23 Rosemary Woolf traced it to Eastern Church tradition, where Noah’s wife, lying midway between Eve and Delilah, represents the recalcitrant sinner unwilling to

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part of the story as it is related in the Bible or liturgy, but her inattention to the word of God offers a dramatic counterpoint to Noah’s obedience which is thematically relevant to the story as a gloss on the parable of the Sower. The liturgical account of the Fall and the Flood bears little responsibility for the mysogynistic strain which developed, associating the two as anti-types of the Virgin, and omits entirely the account of the serpent in Eden. However the thrust of the interpolated material drawn from Chrysostom on the Fall provides a theological statement about the nature of free will which the conflict between Noah and his wife enacts: 24 and indeed the Lord God seeing mankind whom he had made innocent, equipped him, warned him, and armed him. As one in fact who had fought with the Devil … Noah’s wife, though equipped thus, shows an inappropriate attachment to renegade friends and relations (lines 143–4). The importance of the return of the dove is marked in the pageant by singing. The Register gives no indication of what Noah and his family sang, although it might have had liturgical origins. The dove’s return is certainly the climax of the narrative as it is told in the Sexagesima responses in the liturgy, and marked by the versicle, Deferens autem signum clementie dei columba in ore suo (‘The dove carrying a sign of the mercy of God in her mouth’). The moment is commonly interpreted as an influx of grace, the dove being associated with the Holy Spirit. In the following stanza, when Noah has reproved his wife for lamenting the loss of her kin and company, liturgical quotation certainly does infiltrate the text, as the twelfth line (278) moves into Latin with Dum dixit ‘Penitet me’ (‘When he said … it repenteth me’: Genesis 6: 7), then, in the following stanza at the third line (283), Arcam ponam in nubibus (‘I will set my bow in the clouds’). The ending of the pageant overtly links judgement by water with judgement by fire, as Noah explains the nature of the covenant to his family: II Filius Sir, nowe sen God oure souerand syre Has sette his syne þus in certayne, Than may we wytte þis worldis empire Shall euermore laste, is no3t to layne. Noe Nay sonne, þat sall we nou3t desire, For and we do we wirke in wane; For it sall ones be waste with fyre, And never worþe to worlde agayne. enter the Church: 136–8 and note 14, referring to Anna J. Mill, ‘Noah’s Wife Again’, PMLA 56 (1941), 613–26. 24 York Breviary, vol. 1, cols 246–7: Lectio V Etenim dominus deus videns hominem innocentem quem fecerat: instruxit monuit: et armavit. Quippe qui cum diabolo fuerat pugnaturus …

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Vxor Noe

A, syre, owre hertis are soore For þes sawes that 3e saye here, That myscheffe mon be more. Beis no3t aferde þerfore, 3e sall noght lyffe þan yore Be many hundereth yhere.

295–308

This is an interesting addition to the material in the Breviary. The weekday responses concentrate on retrospectively celebrating the covenant between God and mankind. These are confirmed liturgically in the words of the Magnificat, repeated at the end of each day’s office, especially Luke 1: 51–2, which affirm that God’s power is revealed through his deeds, for he has put the arrogant to flight, brought down monarchs, and lifted up the humble. The pageant, however, uses this opportunity for looking forward to the Last Judgement. In terms of the cycle of pageants this is imaginatively appropriate, and has theological precedent. 25 It also connects with the pattern of liturgical reading, for the Gospel text at Mass has also changed within Sexagesima week twice, first to Matthew 12: 30–7 on the fourth weekday, then to Luke 17: 20–37. The latter is the passage in which the Pharisees demand of Christ when the kingdom of God will come. Christ’s reply, that as it was in the days of Noah, so it shall be in the days of man (17: 26) connects the Flood with the end of the world. Matthew 25, the account of the Last Judgement, is then the Gospel text for the first weekday in Quadragesima, only a fortnight after the account of the Flood. This whole period of the calendar has an underlying message conveyed through the parables and the Magnificat about how mankind can, like the Old Testament patriarchs, come to participate in God’s grace through humility and obedience, and, because of Christ’s sacrifice, through the Sacrament of the Altar for which this season makes annual preparation. The Gospel for Mass on Quinquagesima Sunday is Luke 18: 31–43, Jesus’ prediction of the Passion and Resurrection, and the miracle of the healing of the blind man on the road to Jerusalem. 26 This account is dramatised in the cycle as part of the pageant of The Entry into Jerusalem (Skinners, XXV), slipping forward, as it were, a few liturgical weeks. In the Breviary, the Old Testament story continues with selected events from the life of Abraham. Just as the Gospel readings become more overtly predictive of the Passion, so too the Old Testament readings develop a stronger emphasis on prophecy and offer direct typological parallels. The narrative in the Breviary commences with the V.A. Kolve, drawing on St Augustine’s City of God, refers to the tradition that the Flood prefigures both the Day of Judgement and the Passion: The Play Called Corpus Christi, 67–70. 26 York Missal, vol. 1, 43. 25

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antiphon taken from Genesis 18 which begins the account of Abraham entertaining three angels who foretell the birth of Isaac. 27 Although the action of the York pageant, Abraham and Isaac (Parchmentmakers and Bookbinders, X) is devoted to the single incident of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, some of these earlier events are recalled in Abraham’s first speech: Vnto me tolde God on a tyde, Wher I was telde vnder a tree, He saide my seede shulde be multyplyed Lyke to þe gravell of þe see, And als þe sternes wer strewed wyde, So saide he þat my seede schuld be; And bad I shulde be circumcicyd To fulfille þe lawe – þus lernynde he me. 13–20 The Sunday Lessons follow the now familiar pattern of moving from Old Testament text to commentary and Gospel, and the fourth to the sixth Lessons are given over to Chrysostom’s reflection on Abraham’s faith and his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, which provides the main action of the pageant. Meanwhile the responses and versicles begin with God’s instructions to Abraham to move to Canaan. The second response is the account of the appearance of the three angels, selecting as the versicle 18: 4, the foot-washing. The third response briefly gives the account from 14: 17–20 of Melchizedek the priest greeting Abraham with bread and wine and blessing him. These two responses select two events with clear typological significance and, moreover, typological order takes precedence over historical order in their arrangement. The fourth response to the fourth Lesson, following the beginning of the sermon on the sacrifice of Isaac, is 15: 5, God’s promise that Abraham’s seed will be multiplied like the stars in the heavens. The fifth response relates to Abraham’s covenant with God that all male children shall be circumcised (17: 9), and the sixth, seventh, and eighth responses recount God’s anger with Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham’s debate with God over their fate, the destruction of the cities but the rescue of Lot. The final response then tells the story of Jesus’ healing of the blind man on the road to Jerusalem, part of the Gospel for the day. The ferial Responses return to Abraham’s hospitality to the angels, his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, and God’s promise about the proliferation of his tribes. The antiphons anticipate the Passion and celebrate the miracle of the curing of the blind man. The Lessons for the second weekday go back to God’s command to Abraham to go to Canaan. The fourth weekday is, of course, Ash Wednesday, where the special preparation 27

York Breviary, vol. 1, cols. 255 (antiphon), 256, 260 (responses).

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for Lent commences, although the story of Abraham’s coming out of Egypt continues in the ferial Lessons. Taken together, it is clear that the Old Testament material is arranged here such as to provide a commentary on the relationship between the Old and the New Laws, justice and mercy, introducing significant details which have typological relationships with the events of the Passion, and continuing the theme of obedience to the Word of God, at the expense of strict historical order. Consequently, particular events are selected for narration when they have the potential for being extended into the eternal. The pageant Abraham and Isaac presents a clear reading of the potentially lengthy story of the life and death of Abraham that identifies the same priorities as the liturgical treatment of those events. The pageant opens with Abraham recalling, from the perspective of his hundredth year, how God predicted that his seed would multiply like gravel in the sea and stars in the heavens, and how he established the practice of circumcision. The dramatised story continues then with the angel’s visit to command the death of Isaac, who Abraham notes is ‘Thyrty 3ere and more sumdele’ (82). They go to the site of the sacrifice, which is on a hill, with an ass and two companions who stay at the bottom of the hill to look after the ass. The sacrifice is a long drawn-out affair, as Isaac asks first to be bound, then blindfolded. He prepares for death by asking his father’s forgiveness. Once the angel has arrived and he is reprieved, the pageant ends with Abraham’s declared intention to marry Isaac to Rebecca. The Isaac of the York pageant is a young adult whom the dramatist is at pains to make as Christ-like as possible. The whole sequence is clearly typologically inspired and anticipates details of Christ’s Passion from his entry into Jerusalem on an ass to his final moments on the Cross. The final Old Testament episode in the cycle is the pageant of Moses and Pharaoh (Hosiers, XI). The pageant opens with Pharaoh being advised by two counsellors of the growing threat posed by the increase in the Jewish population in Egypt, and his subsequent decision to kill all the male children. The source is Exodus 1, but the parallel in the cycle both in characterisation of the tyrant and his counsellors, and in the plotting, is very like that in the later play of Herod and the Magi (Masons and Goldsmiths, XVI). In the pageant’s collapsed timescale, this exchange is immediately followed by the appearance of the adult Moses, who has escaped the killing of male children, and who is addressed by God from the burning bush. Moses agrees under protest to carry God’s message to Pharaoh that the children of Israel should be set free from bondage. He is promised that his rod will turn into a serpent and back again, and his hand will become leprous then restored as evidence of his status as God’s true messenger. God then promises the plagues he will visit upon the Egyptians should his command go unheeded. The rest of the pageant sees or hears of these threats being carried out. The pageant’s final action involves the theatrically demanding crossing of the Red Sea and the 64

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drowning of the Egyptian followers, and finishes with the Israelites singing a hymn of thanks to God. Why these events from the story of Moses are chosen for dramatisation, and not the account of the journey through the wilderness and the receipt of the Commandments, becomes particularly interesting in the light of the relevant entry in the Ordo paginarum: Moyses exaltans serpentem in d[eserto Pharao] Rex viij Iudei admirante[s et expectantes] ‘Moses raising the serpent in the d[esert] King [Pharaoh] 8 Jews marvelling [and in expectation]’

This suggests that the episode started out as something which was close to the liturgical account, relatively static, and heavily typological. This would have made it similar to typological scenes from the story of Moses in stained glass and the Biblia pauperum. 28 Why the focus of the episode then shifted is the matter of speculation; the events chosen for representation in the text in the Register are harder to stage but involve more dynamic action. Firstly, and most obviously, the burning bush, the rod turned serpent, and the dividing of the Red Sea have theatrical potential, being spectacular but not impossible to reproduce. Secondly, all three moments of spectacle were also established figural types, prefiguring respectively the Virgin Birth, the Crucifixion, and the Harrowing of Hell. 29 But equally the sojourn in the wilderness commonly prefigured Christ’s own forty days and his Temptation, and the Ten 28 See Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, trans. Janet Seligman, 2 vols (London: Lund Humphries, 1971 and 1972), vol. 2, 125–6. The comparison comes from John 3: 14: ‘And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up’. The typical pattern of typological connections is illustrated in the forty-page blockbook Biblia Pauperum, probably printed in Bamberg in the middle of the fifteenth century. See Biblia Pauperum: Facsimile Edition of the FortyLeaf Blockbook in the Library of Esztergom Cathedral, introduction and notes by Elizabeth Soltész (Budapest: Corvina Press, 1967) for coloured plates, and Biblia Pauperum: A Facsimile and Edition, ed. Avril Henry (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1987). On page •e•, a scene of the Crucifixion is flanked on the left by Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, and on the right by Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness, a connection indicated by John 3: 14–16. The accompanying text (Henry 98) states that the serpent signifies Christ on the cross, ‘whom every believing person who wishes to be rid of the serpent (that is the Devil) should gaze upon’. Blockbooks like this circulated widely in the Low Countries in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Although there is little direct evidence of them in England, their area of circulation was one with which York had extensive trading relations. Henry points out that four misericords in Ripon, N. Yorks (1489–1494), and six stained-glass panels originally from Tattershall (c. 1480) show the direct compositional influence of page •l• of the blockbook (36–7). 29 See Henry, Biblia Pauperum, and, for example, Émile Mâle, The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century, trans. Dora Nussey (London: Collins, 1961), 146–8.

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Commandments were central to lay catechesis and are dramatised in the Chester and N. Town pageants of Moses. The Old Testament episodes in the Breviary finish, in the days between Ash Wednesday and the first Sunday in Lent, with the story from Genesis 12 of Abraham’s arrival in Egypt, and the plagues which followed Pharaoh’s mistaken adoption of Sarah into his harem. 30 They resume on the second Sunday in Lent with the story of Jacob and Esau (Genesis 27–8), and continue through to the fourth week in Lent, ending with the story of Moses (Exodus 1–30). 31 To sum up, a special interpretation was put upon the thirty days prior to Lent by the Church Fathers after Jerome, as a period within which the entire history of the world was ordered and recapitulated, and Gregory’s sermon on Matthew 20: 1–16 sets this in motion on Septuagesima Sunday. 32 The subjects of liturgical readings in the period beginning at Septuagesima coincide with two distinct groups of pageants: the Old Testament story and the account of Christ’s Ministry. The narrative of the cycle demands that they should be split chronologically so that they bracket the pageants which tell the Christmas story. Quadragesima Sunday is the pivotal point. These two distinct groups of pageants work differently in the construction of the cycle’s overall meaning, particularly if it is accepted as a celebration of Corpus Christi, the confirmation of the doctrine of transubstantiation, the sign of the perpetuity of Redemption. The Old Testament subjects from the Breviary – the Fall of the Angels, the Creation and Fall of Man, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, Abraham and Isaac, Moses – represent alienation and reconciliation through a succession of Old Testament figures. Those drawn from the Missal – Christ and the Doctors, the Baptism, the Marriage at Cana, and, as we shall see in the following chapter, the Temptation, the Transfiguration, the Woman Taken in Adultery, and the Raising of Lazarus – all focus upon transformations. All these episodes anticipate in different ways the Resurrection of Christ as well as the General Resurrection, but they also explore the potential presence of the divine in the postlapsarian world. The first group exhibits a God who not only initiates every action, every change, each distinct age, but who constantly contemplates and reflects on the progress of his Creation. The second presents God’s intervention in human affairs in a different mode, as participant. These two groups are separated from each other by the pageants’ narrative sequence concerning the Nativity, the central historical moment of transformation at which God became man. 30 31

York Breviary, vol. 1, cols 263–9.

In the Missal, however, the story of Moses occurs in the readings for the fourth weekday in Lent (Exodus 26: 12–18), and, on the following Saturday, as recapitulated in Deuteronomy 26. 32 Hardison, Christian Rite, 87.

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TABLE 2 Readings in the York Missal between Septuagesima and Quadragesima KEY: see Table 1 (page 46).

Day

Epistle/Lesson

Gospel

Septuagesima Sunday

1 Corinthians 9: 24–7 Matthew 20: 1–16 Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard

Feria 4

Hebrews 6: 4–9 Mark 9: 29–36 Prophecy of the Crucifixion: the last will be first

Feria 6

Hebrews 4: 11–16

Luke 9: 51–6 Beginning the journey to Jerusalem

Sexagesima Sunday

2 Corinthians 11: 19–33, 12: 1–9 Luke 8: 4–15 Parable of the Sower

Feria 4

Hebrews 12: 3–9

Feria 6

Hebrews 12: 11–17 Luke 17: 20–37 The coming of the Kingdom of God (e.g. Noah and Lot)

Matthew 12: 30–7 You can tell a tree by its fruit

Quinquagesima Sunday

1 Corinthians 13: 1–13 Luke 18: 31–43 Prophecy of Crucifixion, cure of blind man by faith

Feria 4 (Ash Wednesday)

Joel 2: 12–19

Matthew 6: 16–21 Do not store up treasure on earth

Feria 5

Isaiah 38: 1–6

Matthew 8: 5–13 Centurion’s boy cured by faith

Feria 6

Isaiah 58: 1–9 Matthew 5: 43–8, 6: 1–6 Love your enemies; do not parade your piety

Saturday

Isaiah 58: 9–14

Mark 6: 47–56 Jesus walks on the waters

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Chapter 4

Quadragesima to Palm Sunday The episodes included in the York Cycle from Christ’s adult life after his Baptism complete the bridging of the narrative gap between Christmas and Easter. All are drawn from the liturgy for Lent itself, with an increasing concentration at the beginning and at the end. 1 The beginning of the Lenten season is marked in the Missal by the account of Christ’s forty-day Temptation in the Wilderness (Matthew 4: 1–11). The Gospel text is accompanied by an Epistle reading from 2 Corinthians 6: 1–10, on the need to demonstrate steadfastness in adversity. The two combined signal the origin of the Lenten fast as a formal opportunity for imitating Christ’s own self-imposed period of deprivation. The believer was aware that Christ used this period as a preparation for his mission on earth and eventual death, Resurrection, and return to heaven. The Epistle text braced the individual Christian for the Church’s period of fasting and withdrawal in preparation for his or her mystical emulation of that integration at annual communion. The first weekday Gospel text following this is Matthew 25: 31–46, which is the account of the Last Judgement. In the York Cycle, of course, historical order is rectified, and Doomsday is the subject for the final pageant (Mercers, XLVII), but the proximity of the two texts in the calendar, Temptation and Judgement, may explain the link between the two which literary critics have found in the cycle. 2 The remaining episodes from Christ’s adult life which are included in the cycle then occur as follows. On the Saturday ending the first week in Lent the Gospel reading at Mass is Matthew 17: 1–9, the Transfiguration. The Saturday of the third week in Lent takes John 8: 1–11, the Woman taken in Adultery, as its Gospel reading, and on the Friday of the fourth week of Lent the reading is John 11: 1–45, the Raising of Lazarus. This section of the cycle maintains the thematic focus of the season in the calendar upon the dual nature of Christ. After Epiphany there is a concentration on texts confirming his humanity and divinity which build retrospectively on the evidence of the Nativity; now, in Lent itself, the chosen episodes anticipate and interpret his death and Resurrection See Table 3 (pages 85–6); York Missal, vol. 1, 43-84. E.g. Alan H. Nelson, ‘The Temptation of Christ; or the English Temptation of Satan’ in Medieval English Drama: Essays Critical and Contextual, ed. Jerome Taylor and Alan Nelson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 218–29.

1 2

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through further exploration of his dual nature. The difference is one of emphasis rather than of kind, as all offer narrative illustrations which can also act as glosses on the anagogical meaning of the sacrament of the altar, the participation of the human in the divine. The Temptation of Christ in the wilderness, as it is presented in the gospel account, is a gift to a dramatist, as it is built around two voices opposed in debate. The author of the pageant on the same subject in the York Register demonstrates a recognition that the Temptation has meaning beyond the specificity of its historical moment, and also seems to have recognised the fundamental dramatic opportunity it offered. In constructing the dialogue between Christ and Satan, he appears to draw on the established dramaturgical convention of the psychomachia. Taking its name from a poem by Prudentius, psychomachia came to describe the figural battle between the forces of good and evil. 3 An example in English vernacular drama contemporary with the evolution of the York Play is the great battle scene in The Castle of Perseverance. The characters in this pageant, however, are not allegorical figures but represent God and the Devil face to face in disputation for the first time since the first pageant. The pageant begins with one of those raging, space-clearing, and attention-seeking monologues delivered direct to audience which are a recognised convention for the entrance of tyrant figures in biblical drama. 4 It also offers one of the cycle’s useful opportunities for a character to reprise the story so far. Individual pageants generally set up a provisional autonomy which supports the common-sense view that not all the audience was expected to watch the whole cycle with any degree of sustained attention. Theory and experimental reconstruction of the York Cycle accord in demonstrating that the circumstances of production – a very long play, performed outdoors in the street without designated audience space, on a holiday – meant that few if any of the audience would have attended the whole play sequentially. The Devil’s reprise takes the form of reminding the audience of the circumstances of the Fall, an emphasis relating directly to the focus of Lenten worship, as the narrative moves towards redemption. 5 3 See Morton W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins (East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1952), 101–4. 4 Discussion of this type of set-piece dramatic dialogue, and its contribution to the dramatic liveliness of the pageants, sometimes loosely referred to as ‘realism’, followed the publication of J.W. Robinson, ‘The Art of the York Realist’, Modern Philology 60 (1963), 241–51. 5 The episode of The Temptation has conventionally been read as a pivotal linking element in the cycle between Fall and the Harrowing of Hell, as part of a unifying subplot concerning the history of Satan. Certainly a number of pageants, including the episode at the beginning of the Tapiters’ and Couchers’ pageant (XXX) in which the Devil comes to Pilate’s wife in a dream in an attempt to forestall the Crucifixion,

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The pageants from York, in common with other mystery plays, adhere to no self-conscious convention of either ignoring or acknowledging their audiences, but exploit the local advantages of either. As the characters move into dialogue, the Devil’s reference to Jesus’ solitude, as he issues the ensuing temptation – ‘Ther sall no man witte what I mene / But I and þou’ (65–6) – is, therefore, heavily ironic, coming immediately after the opening speech which has fully acknowledged the public nature of events. What can be read as ambivalent dramaturgy – is the audience ‘there’ or not? – has additional force in context, as the cycle has already openly demonstrated, particularly in for example the pageants of the Fall, that no action can be kept secret from an all-seeing God. The audience is not, however, cast in the role of God here, but is called on to witness events in a way which reflects upon their own conduct. In particular, the Lenten message, ‘A man lyvis noght in mayne and mode / With brede allone’ (74–5), can be read as a rebuke to the absent/present observer. Another is delivered from the pinnacle of the Temple, ‘Be subgette to þi souereyne / Arely and late’ (123–4). A third admonition for the faithful is then presented, paraphrasing the biblical source, as a reproach to the Devil: Non othyr myght schal be thy mede, For wretyn it is, who right can rede, Thy lord God þe aught to drede And honoure ay, And serue hym in worde and dede 163–8 Both ny3t and day. The departing Devil, whose eyes are apparently blinded by brightness emanating from Jesus, crosses paths with one of two angels who have arrived rather belatedly to offer assistance. The Angel enquires whether Jesus has been hard pressed by the Devil. The reply removes any ambivalence from the mode of address and presents straight instruction on how to deal with temptation: For whan þe fende schall folke see And salus þam in sere degré, Þare myrroure may þei make of me For to stande still, For ouercome schall þei no3t be Bot yf þay will. 193–8

foreground thematically the so-called ‘doctrine of divine duplicity’ whereby events associated with the humanity of Christ – childbirth, circumcision, having a father who is a carpenter, etc. – are reduced to the status of divine ruses to prevent the Devil from discovering his divinity. See further David Wee, ‘The Temptation of Christ and the Motif of Divine Duplicity in the Corpus Christi Cycle Drama’, Modern Philology 72 (1974), 1–16.

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The pageant closes with a confirmation of the beneficial effects of withstanding temptation in general: My blissing haue þei with my hande Þat with swilke greffe is no3t grucchand, And also þat will stiffely stande Agaynste þe fende. I knawe my tyme is faste comand, Now will I wende.

205–10

The deixis 6 of these speeches, moving from the impersonal ‘who right can rede’ (164) to ‘folke’ and ‘þei’, compares with the implication of the audience in the Resurrection (Carpenters, XXXVIII), where Pilate refers to ‘the people’ (444) as potential witnesses of events. 7 The theatrical effect is not as pointed as if they were addressed in the second person, but the text seems to invite them to draw a lesson from it for themselves. The pageant is a relatively unembellished version of the gospel account, but offers the opportunity for startling visual effects as Jesus is transported to the pinnacle of the Temple. Textually it presents the epitome of the idea of psychomachia in the disputation between Christ and the Devil. In this battle of words both parties take time out to address their case to the audience. Christ digresses from the narrative of Matthew’s Gospel to indicate how his behaviour may be taken as an example of how to resist temptation. The liturgical reading, Matthew 4: 1–11, marks the opening of Lent, for which it acts as an exemplum. It is a dramatic account of a biblical-historical event, but one which can readily be turned into moral instruction on relevant behaviour. Patristic commentary may give prominence to the wider theme of the Devil’s test of Christ’s nature, but the late medieval preacher or gospel harmonist was far more likely to expand on the episode’s liturgical meaning. In Mirk’s Festial, for example, the model sermon for the first Sunday in Lent draws on the Temptation as an exemplum for the fast period to come: And was þer fourty dayes and so mony nyghtys fastyng for our loue, shouyng to vs and all cristen men and pepull þe vertu and þe mede þat comyth of fasting; þe wheche vertu and mede ben expressed yn þe preface yn þe masse þat ys sayde in holy chyrche þes fourty dayes. 8 6 Deixis, ‘a term used in linguistics to denote those aspects of an utterance that refer to and depend on the situation in which the utterance is made’: Chris Baldick, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). 7 See Olga Horner, ‘“Us Must Make Lies”: Witness, Evidence, and Proof in the York Resurrection’, Medieval English Theatre 20 (1998), 24–76. 8  John Mirk, Mirk’s Festial: A Collection of Homilies: 1, ed. Theodor Erbe, EETS ES 96 (1905), 82–3.

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Advice follows not only on bodily fasting, but also on fasting in thought by concentrating on the miserable nature of humanity, the inevitable stinking corpse. A specifically Lenten interpretation of the biblical account can be found in many popular devotional texts illustrative of the intellectual milieu on which the authors of the cycle drew. There is a sermon for the first Sunday in Lent in the eleventh-century Blickling Homilies which establishes a way of understanding the Temptation in a specifically Lenten context. 9 Similarly, and closer in time to the York pageant, the author of The Stanzaic Life of Christ, a fourteenth-century vernacular gospel harmony from Chester, takes considerable pains to connect biblical events with the liturgy and, like the homilist, opens the section on Quadragesima by relating Lent’s thirty-six days, discounting Sundays, to one tenth of man’s time, which takes Lent back to Ash Wednesday. This writer shows an interesting consciousness of the double time-scheme presented by biblical history on one hand and the calendar on the other. 10 In particular, the General Resurrection is conceived as an annual spiritual occurrence in the Christian’s life, at Easter. The Lenten fast is then compared to the period the Jews spent in the wilderness, that fast to be emulated by Gentiles who want to be delivered out of bondage at Easter. The connection between the two events is there, as we have seen, in the calendar and the liturgy, so this too is another vernacular text which, like the York Cycle, may derive its organisational inspiration from that source. Closer still to York is the pseudo-Bonaventure Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. 11 Nicholas Love’s text promotes the value of solitude, fasting, prayer, and corporeal suffering as a spiritual exercise to be followed. This text is less temporally specific than the other texts, probably because its intended audience was of regular religious in an 9

The homilist gives an emphatically sacramental and calendrical focus to the event. He draws particular attention to the fact that Christ’s fast began immediately after his Baptism, so the Church set its major fast immediately after the celebration of the Baptism and in anticipation of the Crucifixion in emulation of Christ. See The Blickling Homilies, ed. R. Morris, EETS OS 58, 63, 73 (1874), 26. 10 Now is to knowe a nedefull thing to which I rede ow take gode hede, whi we hold not oure fastyng that tyme that Crist did, as was nede. For Crist, as I haue told by-fore, was folowet opon the twolft daie, when he of elde was bout more bygynning thritte 3er in fai, Then his fasting began he of faurty daies, as I fynd, faur skilles whi so don not we schowe I wil whil I haue mynde. 4617–28 11 Love, Mirror, ed. Sargent, 69–76.

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ascetic order devoted to self-deprivation as a way of life rather than an annual obligation, as it was for the laity. Nonetheless it also emphasises the exemplary nature of Christ’s behaviour which came to be associated for the laity with Lenten behaviour. The episode, therefore, plays a pivotal role in an account of Christ’s life, whether the organising principle be figural or festive. Figurally it links the Fall with Christ’s Resurrection and the General Resurrection, importantly foregrounding the mystery of Christ’s dual nature. In its liturgical context its significance on the first Sunday of Lent is as a moral exemplum of how to use fasting, particularly the universal fast of Lent, as a remedy against the temptations of the Devil and a preparation for the feast of the sacrament at Easter. A single thematic preoccupation unites The Transfiguration of Christ (Curriers, XXIII) and all the following Ministry episodes selected by the playwrights: they all explore the dichotomy of Christ’s human and divine natures in ways which prepare for the meaning of the Resurrection. This episode is the Gospel text for the Mass on Ember Saturday in Lent, the day before the second Sunday. Ember Days are the three times in the Church’s year, apart from the great fast of Lent, which are set aside for fasting. Known earlier as quattuor tempora (‘four times’) or the ‘quarter tense’, they fall on the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday in the third week in Advent, the first week in Lent, in the week after Pentecost, and the week following 14 September. 12 The Ember Saturday of Lent was a very important day as it was the primary day in the calendar for the sacrament of Ordination, a day of fasting and keeping vigils with an embellished liturgy, including the Great Vigil of Twelve Lessons which took place during the night. 13 It is not altogether surprising, therefore, that the Gospel text for Mass on this day, with its transformational and thereby sacramental connotations, and coming right at the beginning of Lent, the period counting down to Easter, should have been selected for dramatisation. The pageant text in the York Register elaborates on its gospel source by drawing an important distinction between Elias (Elijah) and Moses, the two figures who miraculously appear to testify to the divinity of Christ. This distinction derives from harmonisations of the gospel accounts of Christ’s life which incorporate the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, as was commonplace at the time when the cycle was written. Elias says that he comes from the Earthly Paradise, Moses that he comes from Hell. Moses, therefore, speaks as if from Limbo where he awaits the Harrowing of Hell:

Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, 110. Cyrille Vogel, Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources, rev. and trans. William G. Storey and Niels Krogh Rasmussen (NPM Studies in Church Music and Liturgy; Washington DC: Pastoral Press, 1986), 312.

12 13

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Frendis, if þat 3e frayne my name, Moyses þan may 3e rede by rawe. Two thousand 3ere aftir Adam Þan gaffe God vnto me his lawe, And sythen in helle has bene oure hame, Allas, Adams kynne, þis schall 3e knawe. Vnto Crist come, þis is þe same Þat vs schall fro þat dongeoun drawe. He schall brynge þam to blys Þat nowe in bale are bonne. This myrthe we may not mys, For this same is Goddis sonne.

121–32

Moses also acknowledges that he was the recipient of God’s Old Law on Mount Sinai, the Ten Commandments, which represent a contract between God and man, one based on divine justice alone. This is the Old Law which is imminently to be fulfilled and modified by Christ’s New Law of justice tempered with mercy, defining the new contract between man and his God drawn up on Calvary. Elias promises to fight on Christ’s side against the Antichrist, when the tenets of divine justice will be reasserted once and for all time. The pageant capitalises verbally and visually on the transformational nature of the event, and its meaning. It treats of Christ’s divinity and his humanity, anticipating his Resurrection as well as the General Resurrection of the dead, as God speaks from a cloud: Þis is my sone, as 3e haue saide, As he has schewed by sygnes sere, Of all his werkis I am wele paied, Therfore till hym takis hede and here. Where he is, þare am I, He is myne and I am his, Who trowis þis stedfastly Shall byde in endles blisse.

173–80

Thus it confers concrete narrative dramatic form upon central theological abstractions, particularly on the dual nature of Christ, as well as the related sacred paradoxes of justice and mercy, doubt and belief. These properties of the biblical account in all probability contributed to the adoption into the calendar of a new feast dedicated to the Transfiguration in the 1480s or 1490s. 14 These are also going to be the thematic foci of the remaining episodes from the Lenten liturgy on which the cycle draws to cover the historical period of Christ’s Ministry. According to the emerging calendrical pattern by which the pageants seem to be selected, the missing pageant of Jesus in the House of Simon the Leper is an intrusion at this point of the York Cycle. The 14

Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 45.

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text from Luke 7 does not occur in the Missal for the Lenten season. John Clerke wrote in the Register: This matter lacks, videlicet: Jesus, et Symon leprosus rogans eum vt manducaret cum eo, duo discipuli, Maria Magdalena lauans pedes Jesu lacrimis et capillis suis tergens. 15

This note does help to explain such a pageant’s inclusion at this point, as the naming of the woman as Magdalena suggests a connection of this episode with the Raising of Lazarus, which does occur during this season. In the biblical text (Luke 7: 37), the protagonist is an unnamed ‘woman in the city who was a sinner’; elsewhere, in John 12: 3, Christ’s feet are anointed at Bethany by Mary, sister of Lazarus, and also wiped with her hair. Traditionally, Mary of Bethany was conflated with Mary Magdalen. The confusion clearly arose because, in the words of Nicholas of Lyra, erat quam multe mulieres vocabantur nomine Marie. 16 Indeed the seven Maries of the New Testament, as well as the woman taken in adultery, the woman of Samaria, and the woman in the city who was a sinner, all combine at some point in the later Middle Ages with the legendary St Mary the Egyptian under the name Magdalen. 17 In the Missal, the story of the Woman taken in Adultery is anticipated by two other thematically related stories featuring women. The story of Christ’s encounter with the woman of Samaria at the well from John 4: 4–42 is the Gospel text for the preceding day, the third Friday in Quadragesima, and the apocryphal history of Susanna is then read before the Gospel text on the Saturday itself. The entire week is given over to the appropriate penitential issues of purgation by water and fire, and of forgiveness. This in turn all goes some way to explaining why, in the York Cycle as it survives in the Register, the Woman taken in Adultery is linked with the Raising of Lazarus. The devisers of the cycle from the 1415 Ordo paginarum onwards seem to be self-consciously maintaining the thematic continuity of that period in the calendar while re-ordering locally once again in order to attend to the narrative integrity of the gospel harmony sequence. The episode of The Woman Taken in Adultery makes case-history of the transformation of the sinner in a pageant which illustrates the gravity of contravening one of the Commandments, but also objectifies the balance between justice and mercy as they co-exist under the tenets of the New Law. Within the narrative of the cycle, the episode York Plays, ed. Beadle, 441. Nicholas de Lyra, Postilla super Biblia, 2 vols (Nuremberg: Koberger, 1481), vol. 2, unpaginated. 17  Helen M. Garth, Saint Mary Magdalene in Medieval Literature (Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science 67: 3; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1950) 18; Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalen (London: HarperCollins, 1993), 16–31; Katherine L. Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). 15  16

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anticipates the trial scenes in the Passion sequence, which systematically expose the inadequacies inherent in earthly justice. This is signalled variously by Jewish and Roman authority, probably overlaid with fifteenth-century English juridical procedures. 18 Within its calendar context, the account presents an optimistic object-lesson for Lent, both on the necessity of repentance and its efficacy for the murkiest of individual souls. The liturgical background to one dramatic treatment of this episode was examined by Peter Meredith in an article on the N. Town pageant which explains why in that instance the episode should open with the line, Nolo mortem peccatoris (adapted from Ezekiel 33: 11), part of the weekday antiphon for the psalms at Prime on the first and third Sundays in Lent, and echoing the Lesson (Ezekiel 18: 20–8) in the Mass on Ember Friday in Lent. 19 He points out that not only is the gospel text presented in full as the reading for the Saturday of the third week in Lent, but that quotations and key phrases from it are repeated elsewhere in this part of the season as antiphons. In the case of the York episode, a different argument for a selfconscious homiletic Lenten composition can be made. The leaf containing the crucial action of the arrival of Christ, his initial exchange with the Scribes and Pharisees, and his writing in the earth, is missing from the Register. All this central action is missing, moreover, because it was contained on one leaf, indicating the comparative economy with which the episode is treated in York. What embellishment there is of the gospel text is confined to the initial debate amongst the Jews and the closing exchange between Christ and his Apostles. The latter, as the chosen closure of the episode and a transition into The Raising of Lazarus, seems to offer a reading which is different in emphasis from the traditional patristic interpretation. St Augustine emphasises the separability of sin and sinner – how Christ can have mercy on the latter without condoning the former – signalled by Vade, et amplius jam noli peccare (‘Go, and now sin no more’; John 8: 11), which is further underscored in the Missal by being made the Communion prayer. 20 His Tractatus 33 on John’s Gospel focuses on the relationship between the individual soul and Christ. 21 The York pageants, on the other hand, focus self-consistently on Christ’s Ministry as an opportunity for general pardon, such as was institutionalised in the season of Lent. Hence the departing Woman’s final speech ends with four lines which are apparently addressed not to Christ but to the 18

Pamela M. King, ‘Contemporary Cultural Models for the Trial Plays in the York Cycle’ in Drama and Community: People and Plays in Medieval Europe, ed. Alan Hindley (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 200–16. 19  Peter Meredith, ‘“Nolo Mortem” and the Ludus Coventriae Play of the Woman Taken in Adultery’, Medium Ævum 38 (1969), 38–54. 20 York Missal, vol. 1, 71. 21 St Augustine, Tractatus 49 in Joannem, PL 35, cols 1747–57.

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audience, as indicated in the pronominal shift from second to third person, opening out the lesson once more into the realm of communal public experience: A, lord, ay loued mott þou bee. All erthely folke in feere Loves hym and his high name, Þat me on þis manere 70–4 Hath saued fro synne and schame. The ensuing dialogue between Jesus and the First and Second Apostles begins by celebrating the former’s role as saviour of sinners, but moves on to emphasise humankind’s role as agent as well as recipient of mercy: A, maistir, here may men se also How mekenes may full mekill amende, To forgeue gladly where we goo All folke þat hath vs oght offende. 87–90 Once again the directly delivered lesson has a communal, social force. The pageant offers a contrast between a group of characters at its beginning, the Scribes and Pharisees representing the Old Law, who offer outright condemnation for the sin, and Christ and the Apostles at the end. The opening scene abstains from characterising the victim of the Jews’ vilification, promoting a reading of the episode in which the Woman is not foregrounded primarily as an individual personality, as she is in other dramatic versions of the episode, but as a generic exemplum. The closing scene of the pageant demonstrates the New Law as a code of social behaviour, in which human beings can be both agents and patients. As such, the focus lies not so much upon the private relationship between the individual soul and the Deity, but upon the institutional legacy of Christ’s mercy as represented by the Church and formalised and celebrated in its public acts of worship and sacraments and, by extension, in the pageants. This view of Christ’s Ministry as signalling the transformation from Old to New Law was broached in the reading of the Commandments offered at the centre of the pageant of Christ and the Doctors (Spurriers and Lorimers, XX). The obligation of the individual Christian to emulate Christ in the exercise of mercy was further institutionalised by his Church as the corporate body of all Christians in, for example, its reading of Matthew 25 on the Last Judgement and the Corporal Works of Mercy, which provides the cycle with its definitive final moment. The broad principles of selection and treatment in the York Cycle of the episodes drawn from Christ’s Ministry, as theophanies which anticipate the Resurrection in various ways, are simply confirmed by the treatment of the last of them, The Raising of Lazarus. The final Friday and Saturday at the very end of Lent are marked by two texts drawn from John’s Gospel. The first, John 11, the narrative of the 77

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Raising of Lazarus, is the immediate dramatic forerunner of Christ’s own Resurrection, a demonstration of his power over death and the Devil. The second, the text for the Eve of Palm Sunday, John 8: 12–20, confirms Christ’s role as true ‘light of the world’, saviour and ultimate judge, as he bears witness for the final time in his Ministry, as it is narrated in the calendar, to his power and divinity. The Raising of Lazarus is paired with an Old Testament account of another resurrection by divine intervention, taken from 3 Kings 17: 17–24, where Elijah calls upon God to resurrect a child in order to demonstrate to its mother that his preaching has divine sanction. And the final emphatic statement of Christ’s divine nature is in turn supported by Isaiah’s vision of God the comforter in 49: 8–15: 8 Thus saith the Lord: In an acceptable time I have heard thee, and in the day of salvation I have helped thee: and I have preserved thee, and given thee to be a covenant of the people, that thou mightest raise up the earth, and possess the inheritances that were destroyed: 9 That thou mightest say to them that are bound: Come forth: and to them that are in darkness: Shew yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in every plain. 10 They shall not hunger, nor thirst: neither shall the heat nor the sun strike them: for he that is merciful to them, shall be their shepherd, and at the fountain of waters he shall make them drink. 11 And I will make all my mountains a way, and my paths shall be exalted. 12 Behold, these shall come from afar, and behold these from the north and from the sea, and these from the south country. 13 Give praise, O ye heavens, and rejoice, O earth, ye mountains, give praise with jubilation: because the Lord hath comforted his people, and will have mercy on his poor ones. 14 And Sion said: The Lord hath forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me. 15 Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? and if she should forget, yet will not I forget thee. 22

22

Vulgate, Isaias 49: 8–15: 8 Haec dicit Dominus: in tempore placito exaudivi te, et in die salutis auxiliatus sum tui; et servavi te, et dedi te in foedus populi, ut suscitares terram, et possideres haereditates dissipatas; 9 ut diceres his qui vincti sunt: exite; et his qui in tenebris; revelamini. Super vias pascentur, et in omnibus planis pascua eorum. 10 Non esurient neque sitient, et non percutiet eos aestus et sol, quia miserator eorum reget eos, et ad fontes aquarum portabit eos. 11 Et ponam omnes montes meos in viam, et semitae meae exaltabuntur.

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The moment is the climax of Lent, the drawing together of the whole examination of the nature of belief, of man’s role as doubter and penitent, and of Christ’s role as comforter, redeemer, and judge. The Devil was denied proof of Christ’s nature in the wilderness, but the return from the wilderness is marked by proofs of Christ’s divinity available in his miracles, as well as by the direct manifestation of the Transfiguration. The ultimate test, which will be the ultimate defining event, is about to be celebrated in the narrative of Holy Week itself. In the York Cycle, this watershed of the faith is represented by the regrettably fragmentary pageant of The Raising of Lazarus (Cappers, XXIV). The episode is, notwithstanding, crucial to the anagogical narrative of the cycle. For the York dramatist, John 11 carried a weight of Latin commentary relating to the definition and nature of Christ, the nature of the Trinity, and the wider implications of the resurrection of the body. For the audience too, Christ’s last miracle offered a dramatic foretaste of the fast-approaching climax of Holy Week. The fragment in the York Register strays very little from John’s narrative. 23 The three participants in the episode are identified as Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary. The pageant in the Register does not call Mary ‘Magdalen’, but the Ordo paginarum does, indicating that the understanding that Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalen were one and the same was well established in York. 24 Commentators in general devote more attention to the figural significance of the three participants in the episode than to their literal identities. The cue is evidently taken from the Glossa ordinaria which states: Lazarus figura est Judaeorum qui infirmi erant in fide Christi: Martha et Maria significant doctrinam bonorum Judaeorum. 25

The distinct roles of the two sisters in particular received detailed inspection, as Martha and Mary were respectively construed as types of 12 Ecce isti de longe venient, et ecce illi ab aquilone et mari, et isti de terra australi. 13 Laudate, caeli, et exsulta, terra; iubilate, montes, laudem, quia consolatus est Dominus populum suum, et pauperum suorum miserebitur. 14 Et dixit Sion: dereliquit me Dominus, et Dominus oblitus est mei. 15 Numquid oblivisci potest mulier infantem suum, ut non misereatur filio uteri sui? Et si illa oblita fuerit, ego tamen non obliviscar tui. 23 Conversely, in the N. Town pageant there is an overtly didactic sequence on moderation in mourning, and the Towneley pageant draws on the Visio Lazari which later appears in the popular compendium known as the Kalender of Shepherdes: see The Kalender of Shepherdes, ed. H.O. Sommer, 3 vols in 1 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1892; facsimile reprint of London: Pynson, 1506), vol. 1, 67–92. Both of these latter embellishments appear to be inspired by the popular contemporary Ars moriendi . 24 REED: York, vol. 1, 155. 25 Walafrid Strabo, Glossa Ordinaria, PL 113–114; Evangelium secundum Ioannem, PL 114, cols 355–426, at col. 399.

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the active and contemplative lives. 26 Traditionally it is Martha who leaves to meet Christ while Mary stays at home and indulges in excessive mourning. In the surviving section of the York pageant, however, there is no distinction drawn between the two sisters: both are equally vehement in their mourning. They have a stanza each: Maria:

Allas, owtane Goddis will allone, Þat I schulld sitte to see þis sight, For I may morne and make my mone, So wo in worlde was neuere wight. Þat I loued most is fro me gone, My dere brothir þat Lazar hight, And I durst saye I wolde be slone For nowe me fayles both mynde and myght. My welthe is wente for euere, No medycyne mende me may. A, dede, þou do thy deuer And haue me hense away.

Martha: Allas, for ruthe now may I raue And febilly fare by frith and felde, Wolde God þat I were grathed in graue, Þat dede hadde tane me vndir telde. For hele in harte mon I neuere haue But if he helpe þat all may welde. Of Crist I will som comforte craue For he may be my bote and belde. To seke I schal no3t cesse Tille I my souereyne see. Hayle, pereles prince of pesse, Jesu my maister so free.

147–70

The clear emphasis here is on two more female voices raised in another anticipatory echo of the planctus which will follow in the liturgy of Good Friday, precisely one week after this episode. The desire to die with their brother which both sisters express anticipates the same desire in the Virgin at the base of the Cross. The York dramatist of this pageant does not entirely ignore patristic commentary as can be seen from the way that the pageant gives prominence both to Christ’s mysterious foreknowledge of his friend’s death and to the period spent by Lazarus in the tomb. 27 The way in Ludolphus de Saxonia, Vita Jesu Christi, ed. L.M. Rigollot, 4 vols (Paris: Palme, and Brussels: Lebrocquy, 1878), vol. 3, 116, for example, offers a clear synthesis of this tradition, equating Martha with the active life, Mary with the contemplative, whereas he sees in Lazarus a figure of the life of penance. 27 Nicholas of Lyra equates this foreknowledge with artem magicam, whereas Chrysostom, in his commentary on John, suggests that Christ’s display of his privileged knowledge to his disciples was a piece of reluctant boastfulness made necessary by their imperfection, and that the four days in the tomb were necessary to establish that Lazarus was not in a coma. Augustine (Tractatus 49 in Joannem, PL 35, 26

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which the dramatist selects from and quotes the gospel account suggests that he is alert to how the episode links with other proofs of Christ’s divinity: I saie to 3ou, Lazare is dede, And for 3ou all grete joie I haue 3e wote I was noght in þat stede What tyme þat he was graued in graue. 137–40 The nature of the miracle, and Christ’s foreknowledge of the death of Lazarus, are part of a broader concern with exploring Christ’s own dual nature and his relationship with the Father. In the gospel account, Christ says to the messenger, Infirmitas non est ad mortem, sed pro gloria Dei, ut glorificetur Filius Dei per autem (‘This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God: that the Son of God may be glorified by it’; John 11: 4). In the York pageant, Father and Son are quite distinct: I saie 3ou þat sekeness Is no3t onto þe dede, But joie of Goddis gudnesse Schal be schewed in þat stede. And Goddis sone schall be glorified ...

107–11

Unfortunately that part of the pageant which would have interpreted Christ’s affirmation of his own divinity, Ego sum resurrectio et vita (‘I am the resurrection and the life’; John 11: 25), is missing. 28 The most theologically problematic verse in the narrative is verse 35, Et lacrymatus est Iesus (‘And Jesus wept’). This, coupled with John’s account of Christ’s perturbation immediately before the accomplishment of the miracle, offered more evidence about Christ’s dual nature at a historical moment immediately prior to the events of the Passion in which such matters predominate. The relevant passage, which bears a substantial burden of commentary, is unfortunately missing from the York pageant altogether. It clearly caused problems for the dramatists treating the episode elsewhere, in attempting to follow the orthodox readings of the incident. 29 English lives of Christ, possibly following cols 1749–54) placed actual figural significance on each of the four days. Both glosses are acknowledged in Ludolphus of Saxony’s popular Vita Jesu Christi, vol. 3, 117. 28 St Augustine (Tractatus 49 in Joannem) sidesteps the issue somewhat by stating that the object was not to glorify Christ himself, but for our benefit, and that, consequently, Lazarus’s death was not for death’s sake, but to make possible a miracle which would enable man to believe in God and survive true death. 29 In Chester, the incident is included by report: The Chester Mystery Cycle, ed. R.M. Lumiansky and David Mills, EETS SS 3 (1974), Play 13: 426–33. All references to the Chester Cycle are from this edition. The N. Town dramatist offers both the tears and his own explanation for them. Christ cannot stand by and watch others weep without himself being moved: The N-Town Play: Cotton MS Vespasian D.8, ed. Stephen Spector, 2 vols, EETS SS 11 (1991) and SS 12 (1991), Play 25: 377–80. All references to the N. Town Plays are from this edition. This dramatist thus foregrounds the paradox of Christ’s dual nature. In the Towneley pageant there is a stage direction

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Ludolphus of Saxony, saw Lazarus himself as chiefly a figura poenitentium (‘figure of the repentant’). 30 This reading, supported by

the Lenten occurrence of the episode in the Church’s calendar, opened possibilities to the dramatists for drawing on the larger body of contemporary vernacular writing on the subject of death and penance. The York playwright, so far as can be established, chose, however, to focus on a less embellished version of the story, possibly relying on the simple liturgical strength of the episode in its significant historical position. The Lazarus miracle offered the playwright a Lenten theme of bodily death and spiritual salvation, as well as an episode which economically anticipated the Passion, the Harrowing of Hell, and the Resurrection of Christ himself. The period of the pageants is one which, broadly speaking, saw a proliferation of visual images associating bodily decay with either, literally, spiritual salvation, or, figurally, man’s state of sin. This episode also offered opportunities for incorporating such popular imagery, and the pageant would have shown the moving of the stone and the unbinding of the risen corpse, a sequence of profound and eerie visual impact. As such it is also an episode which potently actualises the power of the Godhead to enter transformationally into inert matter and which can be read, therefore, as having direct if latent sacramental meaning. Dwelling on the visual aspects of bodily death and the resurrection of a body dead for four days is not simply a by-product of the more macabre manifestations of late medieval visual art; it can be found in patristic accretions to the biblical text. 31 The visual realisation of resurrectio et vita, and the image of light implicit in the interpretation, accords with the devotional impact of the drama. Closely allied to the stock imagery of light in the treatment of the risen corpse is the contemplative image conveyed in Jesus’ own comparison of himself to the day and the apostles to the twelve hours of daylight in John 11: 9-10. The York dramatist devotes an entire stanza to the image:

Jesus: 3e wote by cours wele for to kast,

Þe daie is now of xij oures lange, And whilis light of þe day may last

which indicates that Christ weeps. The most comprehensive account of these verses is found in Saint Hilary’s definition of the Trinity: Hilary of Poitiers, Opera, ed. Benedictine monks of St Maur (Paris: 1693), col. 1052; for translation see Saint Hilary of Poitiers: On the Trinity, trans. Stephen McKenna (Fathers of the Church 25; Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968; reprint of 1954), 442–4. 30 Ludolphus de Saxonia, Vita Jesu Christi, vol. 3, 116. 31 For example, St Ambrose, in his second funeral oration on his brother Satyrus, calls on the reader to visualise the eerie miracle of the rising corpse in his mind’s eye: Saints Gregory Nazianen and Ambrose, Funeral Orations, trans. Leo P. McCaulay, John J. Sullivan, Martin R.P. McGuire, and Roy J. Deferrari (Fathers of the Church 22; Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968, revised reprint of 1953 edition), 197–259, especially 231–5.

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It is gode þat we grathely gange. For whan daylight is pleynly past Full sone þan may 3e wende all wrang. Therfore takes hede and trauayle fast Whills light of liffe is 3ou emang. And to 3ou saie I more, How þat Lazar oure frende Slepes nowe, and I therfore 123–34 With 3ou to hym will wende. The related imagery of day and night, life and death, salvation and sin, already present in the text from John’s Gospel and in the related texts in its liturgical context, is appropriate to its placing towards the end of Lent. The drama exploits this context to convey an accepted correspondence between death and resurrection and the reclamation of lost souls to the faith such as is entirely appropriate as the climax of Lent and a prelude to the events of Holy Week. If we return to the central purpose of the York Cycle of pageants as a celebration of the liturgical feast of Corpus Christi, the celebration of the mystic union between God and man contained in the Eucharist, we can see that naturally the focus of the narrative is the period in which God was actually transformed into a man who lived out a span of man’s time on earth. The cycle tells the story of that relationship as a historical drama with a corporate, and by extension, civic, focus. 32 The narrative has two climaxes, Christmas and Easter, and those climaxes were part of the fabric of the audience’s own life-cycle in the recurrent annual liturgical celebrations of those feasts. According to the Gospels, Christ spent his time on earth teaching men about the nature of their relationship with the Deity, as is confirmed at the very end of the York Cycle in the speech of Deus which opens The Last Judgement (Mercers, XLVII): Sethen in erthe þan gonne he dwelle, Ensaumpill he gaue þame heuene to wynne, In tempill hymselffe to teche and tell, To by þame blisse þat neuere may blynne. 37-40

Teaching by preaching, by example, and by sign, was in turn fundamental to the procedures of the medieval Church. The season of the Church’s year which was traditionally given over to induction into 32

Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 92, expresses this relationship aptly: The Mass is the sign of unity, the bond of love: whoever desires to live must be ‘incorporated’ by this food and drink. Thus the unity and fellowship of the Corpus Christi gild is just one aspect of the ‘mystical body of Christ’, a unity rooted in charity and expressed in the works of mercy. Only in that unity can anyone be a member of Christ, and all the natural bonds of human fellowship, such as the loyalty and affection of one gild member for another, or the care of the rich for the poor, or of the whole for the sick, is an expression of this fundamental community in Christ through the Sacrament.

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and renewing of the bond between the individual and the Church was the period between Christmas and Easter, when the liturgy draws on texts from both Old and New Testaments which teach and remind the human race about the historical nature of its contract with the Deity. The relationship is then confirmed sacramentally in the pattern of timeless rituals of Baptism, Penance, and, particularly, Eucharist. The cycle of pageants, using the Septuagesima Matins readings from the Old Testament and the major signifying episodes from the Gospel readings at Mass in the period immediately after Epiphany and in Lent itself, is a reprise of this pattern for enactment on the day of its celebration.

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TABLE 3 Readings in the York Missal between Quadragesima and Palm Sunday KEY: see Table 1 (see page 46).

Day

Epistle/Lesson

1 Sunday in Quadragesima

Gospel

2 Corinthians 6: 1–10

Matthew 4: 1–11 The Temptation in the Wilderness

Feria 2

Ezekiel 34: 11–16

Matthew 25: 31–46 The Last Judgement

Feria 3

Isaiah 55: 6–11 Matthew 21: 10–17 Expelling the money–changers from the Temple

Feria 4

Exodus 24: 12–18; 3 Kings 19: 3–8 Matthew 12: 38–50 The Doctors and the Pharisees ask for a sign

Feria 5

Ezekiel 18: 1–9

Feria 6

Ezekiel 18: 20–8 John 5: 1–15 Curing of the crippled man at Bethesda

Saturday

Deuteronomy 26: 15–19; Deuteronomy 11: 22–5; 2 Machabees 1: 2–5, 23; Sapientiae 36: 1–10; Daniel 3: 49–55, 56–88; 1 Thessalonians 5: 14–23 Matthew 17: 1–9 Transfiguration

John 10: 13:31–47 Jesus defines truth and freedom

2 Sunday in Quadragesima

1 Thessalonians 4: 1–7 Matthew 15: 21–8 Curing the daughter of the Canaanite woman

Feria 2

Daniel 9: 15–19 John 8: 21–9 Jews attempt to find out who Jesus is and who sent him

Feria 3

3 Kings 17: 8–16

Matthew 23: 1–12 The false pride of the Pharisee

Feria 4

Hester 13: 9–11, 15–17

Matthew 20: 17–28 The sons of Zebedee

Feria 5

Jeremiah 17: 5–10

John 5: 30–47 Honour comes from God

Feria 6

Genesis 37: 6–22

Matthew 21: 33–46 Tenants in the vineyard are killed 85

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Saturday

Genesis 27: 6–39

3 Sunday in Quadragesima

Ephesians 5: 1–9

Luke 15: 11–32 Parable of the Prodigal Son Luke 11: 14–28 Casting the devil out of the dumb man

Feria 2

4 Kings 5: 1–15

Luke 4: 23–30 Physician, heal yourself

Feria 3

4 Kings 4: 1–7

Matthew 18: 15–22 The doctrine of forgiveness

Feria 4

Exodus 20: 12–24 Matthew 15: 1–20 Jewish and Christian law – washing hands before meals

Feria 5

Jeremiah 7: 1–7

John 6: 27–35 The bread of life

Feria 6

Numbers 20: 6–13

John 4: 4–42 The woman of Samaria at the well

Saturday

Daniel 3: 1–9, 15–17, 19–30, 34–62; John 8: 1–11 The woman taken in adultery

Historia Susannae

4 Sunday in Quadragesima

Galatians 4: 22–31, 5: 1

John 6: 1–14 The miracle of loaves and fishes

Feria 2

3 Kings 3: 16–28 John 2: 13–25 Driving the money-changers from the Temple

Feria 3

Exodus 32: 7–14

Feria 4

Ezekiel 36: 23–8; Isaiah 1: 16–19 John 9: 1–38 Healing the man born blind

Feria 5

4 Kings 4: 25–38

John 5: 17–29 The hour is coming

Feria 6

3 Kings 17: 17–24

John 11: 1–45 The Raising of Lazarus

Saturday

Isaiah 49: 8–15

John 8: 12–20 The light of the world

John 7: 14–31 Teaching in the Temple

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Part 3

Feast of Feasts In the previous chapters the case has been made for the uniqueness of the York Cycle as a dramatic phenomenon, our only surviving text of a full cycle of fifteenth-century Corpus Christi pageants, modelled on patterns of lay worship and with a particular sacramental focus. Of the great urban cycles, it is the earliest and the most obviously liturgical in its influences and resonances. We have seen firstly how the Play as a whole is connected with devotion to Corpus Christi, fashionable amongst the York urban élite who managed its production, and how that accords with contemporary fashions in eucharistic worship, how it is an overt celebration of Christ’s presence in the community through the mystery of transubstantiation designed as the focus of the annual feast. 1 We have explored further how the content of the cycle is organised and selected, and how its version of biblical narrative relates to the calendrical sequence of liturgical reading. 2 In this section we will explore another of the ways in which the York Cycle is unified by structural understandings drawn from the practices of worship. A number of episodes in the York Play involve the enactment of a biblical/historical event, where that enactment is in turn mediated through the recurrent festive celebration of the event as an adjunct to the annual round of worship. One of the things we will see is how those festive practices are reinvented in the performance of the cycle. For example, the influence of the Good Friday Improperia (‘Reproaches’) on the distinctive York Crucifixion is well known, 3 but there are other instances in which liturgical tropes drawn from the complex festive liturgies of Christmas and Holy Week shape not only content but mode of presentation in the Nativity and Passion sequences in the cycle. Moreover, there are episodes in the cycle, Herod and the Magi, the Purification, and the Entry into Jerusalem, which refer to separate calendar festivals in which the signature mode of celebration is procession. Finally, there are episodes in the cycle, e.g. The Baptism and The Last Supper, which refer both to historical events and to the sacraments deriving from them. Their textual relationship with the 1

See Part 1 above, and Pamela M. King, ‘York Plays and the Feast of Corpus Christi: A Reconsideration’, Medieval English Theatre 22 (2002 for 2000), 13–32. 2 See Part 2 above, and King, ‘Calendar and Text’. 3 Woolf, English Mystery Plays, 260–1.

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liturgy is complex and bears comparison with the presentation of Seven Sacraments sequences in other media. 4 Another thing we shall explore is how the cycle mediates material which is both literal and anagogical in its frame of reference. In each of these instances the experience, and even the behaviour, of the fifteenth-century audience of the pageants would have been enriched and modified by their experience of, and participation in, the related acts of worship. It involves a difficult leap of imagination for us to recreate the medieval audiences’ theatrical ‘naiveté’, that is their lack of experience of commercial performance. It is surely also difficult to recreate exactly the other experience which they carried with them to a performance of the York Cycle, that is, their routine participation in the acts of public worship which were part of the social and spiritual fabric of the medieval city. In short, we cannot know how the fifteenthcentury York audience behaved when they attended a performance of the cycle. We can be reasonably sure, however, that they understood the difference between that experience and the experience of participating in an act of worship, even when there was shared subject-matter. The modern commentator, unlike the fifteenth-century citizen, is obliged to attend to the distinction if we are to arrive at an understanding of the nature of the cross-fertilisation of one mode with the other. A helpful basic distinction is that between ritual, in which there need be no audience as it is performed for the benefit of the participants, and drama whose audience is its raison d’être. The active participation of the fifteenth-century layperson in the calendar of Christian worship is easy to overlook, but involved a variety of small but significant rituals. Beyond reciting the Paternoster, Ave, and Creed, and taking annual communion in one kind, there was a series of little extra-liturgical activities, such as muttering prayers when the Host was elevated, and others which we will return to in this section, such as carrying palms on Palm Sunday, or making crosses out of sticks and string, and creeping to the Cross on Good Friday. Many of these activities were accorded apotropaic power, and were probably encouraged by the clergy to foster a sense of inclusion, and to give the people something to do. Nevertheless, however passive their role, the congregation in an act of worship is still participating rather than watching because simple attendance is accorded transformational power, assisting in the vital process of securing salvation. Attending a play as a member of the

4

These ideas were first explored in Pamela M. King, ‘The York Cycle and Instruction on the Sacraments’ in Learning and Literacy in Medieval England and Abroad, ed. Sarah Rees Jones (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 3; Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 155–78.

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audience has no such power, whatever the level of audience ‘involvement’. 5 There is also a distinction to be made between the nature of representation in an act of worship and in a play. Whatever the metaphorical or typological connotations of the action in a mystery play – as where Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac may be set up in such a way as to point to its figural relationship with the death of Christ – it is all always mimetic. In an act of worship, on the other hand, the voices of biblical characters may be imitated in, for example, question-andanswer antiphons and the Improperia, but there the liturgy slides into only quasi-mimesis rather in the way that Jane Austen uses free indirect speech to give a flavour of voice and immediacy. Where mimetic representation within the practices of ritual is more developed, and clerics assume the roles of individual biblical characters in liturgical drama, it generally has the status of a trope, a peripheral elaboration of the ritual itself. The fully integrated mode of representation in an act of worship is generally anagogical rather than mimetic, as with the case of the Church’s central ritual of the Mass and its other sacraments. The celebrant at the centre of the Mass first invites Christ to come down, then welcomes him: the words and actions of the priest reciprocating and commenting on the mystical action of transubstantiation. The distinction between the mimetic and anagogical modes of representation in the act of worship is identified succinctly by Karl Young in his commentary on the Good Friday ritual of the Depositio, the extra-liturgical simulation of the burial of Christ, and its correlative resurrection in the Elevatio, undertaken at dawn on Easter Day: 6 As the Living Body of Christ … the Host could not fittingly be used to represent the dead, or be enclosed within a sepulchrum. Sometimes, however, it could have an appropriate part in the ceremonial of the Elevatio. When the object buried was a cross, the raising of it could be very effectively accompanied by the exhibiting of the Host.

The cross, by a customary act of mimetic synecdoche, here represents Christ at the historical moment of his burial. The Host, on the other hand, is, for believers, the body of the living Christ in perpetuity by its mystical transformation when the priest consecrates it. These modal distinctions are important to bear in mind when we consider how the procedures of worship are translated into play.

Sarah Beckwith discusses this from a different standpoint in Seeing God, 121–2. Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), vol. 1, 132. 5 6

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Of all the activities shared by worship and drama, procession is the most complex. 7 Working towards an understanding of the macrolanguage or languages of procession is a project in its own right, but it is also a necessary preliminary to perceiving how ecclesiastical processions may have influenced particular pageants within the York Cycle. The Entry into Jerusalem (Skinners, XXV), for example, contains a procession which is a representation of the arrival of Christ and his followers in the holy city, as celebrated annually on Palm Sunday. The pageant is also a component within a production whose organizational framework, the York Cycle, is processional, and derives from another religious procession, the Corpus Christi procession. In this pageant, procession is used allusively and reflexively in the production of meaning. Where and why the Church developed the processional mode as integral to worship in the first place is a particularly thorny question. The origin may be simply practical, as in the very early Church officiating priests migrated formally with their entourages to places where Masses were to take place, thereby ensuring consistency of the Church’s central ritual practices. And writing about Holy Week processions Andrew Hughes is of the view that they ‘arose out of the practice in Jerusalem of re-enacting the events in their historical locations’. 8 Where the first is pragmatic, the second suggests a wholly mimetic impulse in the early Church. The latter is largely what is preserved in, for example, the Palm Sunday procession. Other ecclesiastical processions, notably the Corpus Christi procession itself, are however not mimetic, as no travelling event, no specific locale, is being commemorated. So why process? Clearly the early Church did not evolve in a vacuum; it may have simply inherited the processional mode from the religious and secular processions of the cultural environments in which it matured. The Roman Empire celebrated its religious feasts and military triumphs by processing, as did, for example, the cult of Isis. In addition to ecclesiastical processions, events whose calendar position is fixed, but which can occur in any designated ecclesiastical space, there are civic processions, tied in both time and space. These two types of procession may in some instances not have a great deal in common, but in others such a bipartite division may be artificial. The York Corpus Christi procession was both ecclesiastical and civic. Civic processions, in the Middle Ages as now, seem to have two major functions: the first to display and assert the particular identity of 7 For a detailed analysis of different kinds of processional theatre, see Tom Pettitt, ‘Moving Encounters: Choreographing Stage and Spectators in Urban Theatre and Pageantry’, Medium Aevum Quotidianum 48 (2003), 63–93. 8 Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, 906.

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sub-groups within a culture according to a linear and hierarchical order; the second, to delineate, encircle, or simply occupy a given space, sometimes with a specific focal destination. In the language of cultural geographers such as de Certeau or Lefèbvre, a procession of this kind represents a particular spatial practice: occupation of the street by ‘embodied persons’. It therefore engages in an act of appropriation of social space that in turn reproduces and redefines that space as no longer neutral but as a particular place. By a series of signs and codes, it imposes order on the space it occupies. 9 This may seem a long way from liturgical procession, but one point of contact may be that those early processions in Jerusalem from which the Church derived its processional impulse were those of early militant Christians occupying the streets in this manner. The evolved ecclesiastical procession tends not to be mimetic, and the use of the processional mode is consequently more obscure. Perhaps the act of processing is simply a choreographed way of moving, according to the formal register of the event, from one symbolic locale to another, where the destination, not the journey, carries signification. In the Latin dramas at Epiphany or Easter in the large collegiate churches of medieval Europe, the action divides into that which takes place in the loci, that is the side-chapels and other designated ‘homes’ of individual characters, e.g. Herod’s court or Christ’s tomb, and the platea, the open spaces and perambulatory aisles between these places. I have written elsewhere about how this division and designation of space in the large medieval church may indeed offer a useful vocabulary for discussing the spatial semantics and scenography of vernacular medieval drama. 10 Processions become particularly complex when they have as their goal not an encircling nor a destination, but an encounter, as we shall see in the example of when the processing clergy on Palm Sunday leave the church building and meet with the people carrying their palms at the churchyard cross. The nature of processional encounters complicates the division of a procession into participants and audience, both occupying the space, but one by moving through it, the other by staying still and observing the procession, hierarchical and often narrative, pass by. Meg Twycross has suggested adopting a tripartite definition of levels of engagement with a procession: the active

See The Spaces of Postmodernity: Readings in Human Geography, ed. Michael J. Dear and Steven Flusty (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), especially 303 and 131–41, for useful abridgements and summaries of this area of work. 10 Pamela M. King, ‘Spatial Semantics and the Medieval Theatre’ in Themes in Drama, Volume 9: The Theatrical Space, ed. J. Redmond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 45–58. 9

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participant, and the responsive participant, as well as the passive spectator. 11 Processions cross the boundaries between ritual and drama, between anagogy and mimesis, outlined above. The Corpus Christi procession, anagogic in focus, may originally have involved elements of mimesis – later to evolve into tableaux or pageants – if those processing were dressed up as biblical figures, as is still the case in surviving examples. 12 It is also hierarchical in the manner of a civic procession because of the processing guilds or social organisations, and it occupies the street not in an act of militancy so much as of sanctification, as the route marks out as special the space encircled by the living body of Christ in the form of the Host. The pageants, which developed in York as an adjunct to the procession before usurping its place in the calendar, move processionally too. They are not only influenced by acts of worship, processional, sacramental, anagogic, and ritualised, but they draw on those acts as tools through which meaning is developed, translating them into their own wholly mimetic mode of production. It is to this process of translation, and how the originating acts of worship inform our understanding of the Register texts and of the likely organisation and production of individual pageants, that we now turn.

11 Meg Twycross, ‘Some Approaches to Dramatic Festivity, especially Processions’ in Festive Drama, ed. Meg Twycross (Cambridge: Brewer, 1996), 1–33. 12 King, ‘Corpus Christi: Valencia’.

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Chapter 5

The Christmas Season The Nativity sequence in the York Register begins with the Spicers’ pageant (XII) of The Annunciation and the Visitation. This is followed by the Pewterers’ and Founders’ pageant (XIII) of Joseph’s Trouble about Mary, then by the Tilethatchers’ Nativity (XIV), and the now incomplete Chandlers’ pageant of the Shepherds (XV). There is then a complex co-operative pageant of Herod and the Magi, presented respectively by the Masons and Goldsmiths (XVI). After that, the Hatmakers, Masons, and Labourers contributed the long pageant XVII, The Purification, followed by the Marshals’ brief Flight into Egypt (XVIII). The sequence concludes with the Girdlers’ and Nailers’ Slaughter of the Innocents (XIX). The chronological order in which the pageants occur in the cycle differs markedly from liturgical order. The latter, after the double feast of the Nativity at Christmas, celebrates the feasts of the Holy Innocents, then the Circumcision, Epiphany, and finally the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. These feasts and their octaves are interspersed with the high concentration of saints’ days and their octaves in the same period. Many elements of the liturgy, particularly the liturgy of Christmas itself, are repeated across following feasts, giving the season a coherence that overrides historical verisimilitude. In the cycle, on the other hand, chronological sequencing is attended to and each episode is largely self-sufficient. Consequently, to take one example, there is little emphasis put on Herod’s character in the liturgy for Epiphany, because that focus belongs to the earlier feast of the Innocents, whereas in the cycle clearly Herod meets the Magi before he orders the slaughter, and his ‘dramatic character’ as tyrant and bully is established from his first appearance. The Annunciation by the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, commonly accepted as the first event of the Christmas story, is celebrated twice in the liturgical calendar. It clearly has its place in the Advent season, and is the Gospel for the Wednesday after the third Sunday in Advent, followed on the Thursday by the Visitation by Mary to Elizabeth, but as a fixed feast it was also formally celebrated annually on 25 March. In that position it occurs somewhere in among the Old and New Testament narratives in the Breviary which are the focus of the readings through spring, as we have seen in Part 2 above. In the York Cycle, the Annunciation and Visitation pageant is both the culmination of the Old 93

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Testament sequence and also the introduction to the Christmas sequence. The pageant opens with a very compressed account by a figure called Doctour of material equivalent to a processus prophetarum, before the action abruptly shifts to the appearance of the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin. In historical time the speech of the Doctour may be regarded as covering a gulf in the cycle’s chronological narrative sequence. However, liturgical time, and the narrative received through the annual cycle of worship, presents no such problem as in the calendar the biblical ages slip across one another like tectonic plates. The York Breviary offers explicit guidance in the rubrication of how the occurrence of the fixed feast of the Annunciation in March should be handled if it collides, for example, with Sundays in Lent, with Palm Sunday or even, as was possible, Easter Sunday. 1 As we have seen, the whole pre-Passion sequence presents a number of decisions in the devising of the cycle of which teasing out the historical from the calendrical sequence, once one understands how the experience of the liturgical calendar works, is one of the more straightforward. There are more difficult and directly dramaturgical issues relating to the episodes surrounding Christmas, and they particularly focus on the presentation of the Nativity itself. For the devisers of the cycle sequence, dealing with simple historical rather than liturgical ordering, the problem remained of how to present the iconic actions which make up the Nativity narrative as a chronological sequence, when they are simultaneous actions. St Thomas Aquinas, reviewing the evidence, was of the view that the angel appeared to the shepherds on the very day that Christ was born, and the star appeared to the Magi at the same time or, if one follows Augustine and Chrysostom, even earlier, to give them time to prepare for their journey. 2 Conventionally the Magi’s actual appearance is later in the sequence, for it is the end of their journey and arrival in the Holy Land that forms the focus of Epiphany which was a separate liturgical celebration from Christmas, so we shall put it on one side until later. The shepherds are more difficult. In manuscript illumination the appearance of the angels to the shepherds on the hillside often appears in the same frame as the Nativity. 3 In the Coventry Pageant of the Shearmen and Taylors, the dramatist handles the need for simultaneous 1 2

York Breviary, vol. 1, cols 233–4. See also Chapter 3 above. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, ed. and trans. Thomas Gilby and

others, 61 vols (London: Blackfriars with Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964–1981), vol. 52, The Childhood of Christ, ed. and trans. Robert Potter OP (1972), 128–33 (39. 31–7). On-line version (1920 edition) at: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/ 403606.htm. 3 Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, vol. 1, 84, and plates 197, 198, 203, and 206. Plate 198 is taken from the illustration by the Constance Master of the Vision of St Bridget of Sweden (c.1420) – see further 96 and 97 below.

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action by leaving Mary in the stable and focusing the audience’s attention on the shepherds at the moment of the birth, before returning with Joseph to the stable once more where the child has been born. 4 Thus the Coventry dramatist evaded another major problem, and cheated his audience of the central event, the representation of the birth of Christ on stage. The Coventry pageants are, however, long composite episodes devised in the mid-sixteenth century, and their solution to such dramaturgical problems is late. Other treatments, notably that in the East Anglian N. Town Plays, surround the event with miraculous portents, drawn chiefly from the Golden Legend, to embellish its importance while drawing attention away from the mechanics of enacting the moment of birth itself. 5 Not so in York, where the birth is presented directly, and apparently without distraction, on stage. The sources of inspiration for this theatrical treatment of the event, and for other events which reflect the subject-matter celebrated in the liturgy of the Christmas season, are the concern of this chapter. The 1415 Ordo paginarum provides the first reference to how the Nativity was handled within the Corpus Christi celebration and shows that there was some apparent attempt to integrate the two episodes of the birth and the Annunciation to the Shepherds. The entry reads: Tilers: Mary with (…) Joseph, the midwife, the [new-born] boy [lying in a manger] between the ox and the ass, the angel speaking [to the shepherds, and the players in the following pageant]. Chandlers: Shepherds speaking to one another, [the star in the East,] the angel announcing [the joy over the newborn boy to the shepherds]. 6

This is interesting in itself, as it suggests that the two pageants were performed in such a way as to be somehow permeable. Possibly they had not settled into the strict sequence of arriving one at a time, setting up, performing, and striking their sets, that later evolved, but may have arrived at, and moved through, stations as tableaux vivants with shorter and simpler texts and less dramatic action than is called for by many of the pageants in the Register. The Register, however, orders the Nativity and the Shepherds as two sequential and self-contained pieces, ignoring chronological simultaneity in favour of logical precedence. The situation, and the temptation to speculate, is the more intriguing because the Nativity pageant seems to have got simpler, not more Coventry Corpus Christi Plays, ed. King and Davidson, 14–20; 83–111. The N-Town Play: Cotton MS Vespasian D.8, ed. Stephen Spector, 2 vols, EETS SS 11 (1991) and SS 12 (1991), vol. 1, 152–63; Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols (Princeton NJ:

4 5

Princeton University Press, 1993), vol. 1, 37–43. 6 REED: York, vol. 1, 16–24; translated in vol. 2, 702–9. Material in square brackets was added or altered some time after 1415.

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complex as the cycle evolved. In the later Register, the Tilethatchers’ pageant is a two-hander, the only characters Joseph and Mary, the dialogue a brief 154 lines, with the birth of Jesus the central event. The pageant has attracted attention in the past because of its lyrical poise and simplicity, and because commentators have been fascinated by how the moment of birth was managed. Rosemary Woolf, still the most reliable commentator on the theological sources of the pageants, discusses the two opposed approaches to the Nativity in terms of that influenced by the Golden Legend as opposed to the focus of the Meditaciones Vitae Christi, ‘which by concentration on the realistic circumstances of the birth itself, aims to arouse a love for the ChristChild and compassion for Him, born as He was into poverty and hardship’. 7 Woolf also points to the similarly affective approach to the event available in the influential Revelations of St Bridget of Sweden. Bridget describes how the child is born while the Virgin knelt in prayer, while the York author, probably with the help of iconography and literature, has presented the scene with the stillness of a painting and the gentle charm of the nativity lyrics: the result is a play which is gentle, tranquil and moving. 8 This is broadly the starting point pursued by Janet Cowen, who considers further how the spatial property of drama called for special representation of the communication between the divine and the human, ‘the bounding and containing of the infinite’. She compares the spatial economy of the Annunciation and Visitation and the Nativity. The latter ‘is notable for the way it combines realism and intimacy with formality and devotion’. She agrees that the way in which the moment of the birth was managed probably derived from the Revelations of St Bridget, who saw the Virgin kneeling in prayer, and the child appearing naked, shining with light, on the ground in front of her. She points out just how much St Bridget’s vision has in common with the York pageant: Joseph going to look for light leaving the Virgin alone, the Virgin’s reverent address to the child, taking the child on her knee, Joseph and Mary’s worshipping the child together. This is a relatively new iconography replacing the earlier one which pictured the Virgin in bed next to the manger. She further concludes that in all treatments the ‘lytel space’ in its ‘local particularity and in its symbolic potential, is vital’. 9 Certainly York in the mid fifteenth century is likely to have imported influences of this kind. The clerical authors of the cycle would have been aware of vitae Christi, and particularly, as we saw in Woolf, English Mystery Plays, 159–81. Woolf, English Mystery Plays, 181. Janet Cowen, ‘Heven and erthe in lytyl space’ in Aspects of Early English Drama, ed. Paula Neuss (Cambridge: Brewer, 1983), 62–77.

7 8 9

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Chapter 1, of Nicholas Love’s vernacular Mirror which had lately been presented to Arundel when he was archbishop. 10 However it is also possible to argue for a rather different reading of the Nativity pageant, as having a particular and pivotal role within the celebration of Corpus Christi, a special relationship with the sacramental focus of that event. Its undoubted affinity with the Revelations of St Bridget and affective vitae Christi may point not so much to direct influence but to a source of inspiration which they held in common, that is a particular theological understanding of the Nativity of Christ and the imagery through which this is expressed in the Christmas liturgy. It is a commonplace in Christian teaching that the Incarnation of Christ was the moment when the quotidian and the eternal met. The nature of Christian history as radiating from the special moment of the fusing of the divine and the human, of the intersecting of linear time with eternity, is reflected in Christian worship as expressed and controlled through the liturgy. The cycle of each day has its focal point in the Sacrament of the Altar through which the historical event of the Incarnation is mystically re-enacted at the moment of the consecration of the Host, where the consecrated Mass wafer, transformed into the Body of Christ, is present in the midst of the company of believers. The ingesting of the Body of Christ, holy food, renews the individual’s participation in the promise of salvation through the forgiveness of sins. The liturgical celebration of the Nativity, that is the Vigil of Christmas and the feast day itself, is characterised in the Use of York, as elsewhere, by the fact that it involves two additional Masses. There is a Mass at cockcrow, another at dawn, the third, the Great Mass, at the usual time of day. This pattern of three Masses had settled into the liturgy by the mid twelfth century. 11 The spoken and sung texts in the Missal and accompanying Processional promote an understanding of the mystical nature of the Incarnation which recurrently focuses on how the single moment of Christ’s birth aligns and fulfils all time past and to come. The material particularities of the Nativity, the manger, the ox, and the ass, are celebrated alongside the mystical paradox of the Virgin Birth, in particular that the Virgin gave birth to her Father, suggesting that, as linear time is superseded by the eternal, so too is the hierarchy of generation. The focus on the crib, the ox, and the ass as the material markers of the scene of the Nativity had been part of the popular celebration of Christmas since the early thirteenth century, although it is a much earlier ecclesiastical custom. The presence of the ox and the

Love, Mirror, ed. Sargent, intro 30–7. For a succinct explanation of the evolution of the Christmas liturgy see New Catholic Encyclopaedia, sv Christmas, also online at http://www.org.newadvent/ cathen/03724b.htm. 10 11

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ass derive from a misinterpretation of Isaiah 1: 3 and Habakkuk 3: 2. 12 In the York pageant, these trappings of the lay, material, and sentimentalised picture of the Nativity scene are embellished to supply the affective framing context for some altogether less realistic and more theologically exacting images. The entry of the divine into the postlapsarian human world is also recurrently referred to in the liturgy as a suffusion of light into darkness, common imagery derived from Isaiah’s prophecy of the Incarnation (9: 2). And finally the infant is celebrated as holy food, realising the connection between the historical moment of the Incarnation and the perpetual availability of the Body of Christ through the Sacrament of the Altar. This blending of the material, the mystical, and the sacramental is what characterises the brief York pageant. Christmas celebrations in the York Missal commence with the Vigil of the Nativity, emphasising that in the morning Christ’s glory will be seen. The Saviour of the world coming to reign over humankind is anticipated; the coming of Christ the Redeemer is perceived as foreshadowing his coming as the Judge. This is precisely the understanding of the nature of the Nativity which Joseph will express in the York pageant when he returns to the stable to greet the baby: Hayle riall kyng, roote of all right, Hayle saueour.

109–10

In the Mass of the Vigil, the offertory is from Psalm 24: 7 (Vulgate 23), Tollite portas, ‘Lift up your gates’. This further anticipates the salvation of those already dead and held in Limbo at the time of the Incarnation, because it proleptically uses the words conventionally attributed to Anima Christi at the Harrowing of Hell, and quoted in the York Saddlers’ pageant on that subject (XXXVII: 18). The entire liturgy points to a reading of the birth of Christ as a collapsing of time and space. Eternity is contained both spatially and temporally, bringing together Creation, Nativity, and Judgement, and drawing on images of salvation. The terms by which the Virgin refers to Jesus in the York pageant repeatedly indicate this aspect of the moment of his birth, firstly at lines 31–2: For in þis place borne will he be Þat sall vs saue fro sorowes sere. Then after he is born, he is greeted at lines 61–3: Hayle, thurgh whos myght All þis worlde was first begonne, Merknes and light.

And at line 113 he is again addressed as, ‘Lord þat all þis worlde schall wynne’. The supplementary materials in the Processional for Christmas Day pick up on the same significances: 12

See Schiller, Iconography, vol. 1, 59–61.

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On going out of the choir: You are blessed, Mary, who carried

the Lord, the Creator of the world. You gave birth to your Maker, and you remain a virgin eternally. 13

There is a particular focus here on one side-effect of the collapsing of all time and generations: the paradox of Mary’s relationship with her son/Father. She echoes this in the pageant with the opening lines of her spontaneous greeting to her new-born child: ‘Hayle my fadir, and hayle my sone’ (58). The processional responsory repeats the rather strange imagery by which the nature of Christ’s Incarnation is understood – ‘he entered through the ear of the Virgin, into our territory ...’ 14 – and the concluding prose again emphasises the paradoxical nature of the event: Whom the heavens and the earth and the sea, in their entirety, cannot contain, is an infant filling the manger of an ass – ruling the heavens, suckling at breasts. The maker of the mother, born today, is created from the mother. The creator of the day is today created into the day. The Rising Sun of the world is born, whom Gabriel called Emmanuel, God with us. 15

The liturgical celebration of Christmas Day commences with a Mass at cock-crow. In this the theme of light into darkness begins to predominate immediately after the Gloria, in the prayer: God who made this most holy night to shine with the brightness of the true Light, give to us, we beg, that we who have acknowledged the mysteries of his light on earth might also enjoy his joys in heaven. 16

Light on earth here anticipates joy in heaven. This is followed by Isaiah’s prophecy of the Nativity of Christ (9: 2, ‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light …’ and 9: 6–7, ‘For a child is born unto us …’) before the Sequence picks up on the themes of light, harmony, and peace:

13

14

15

16

York Manual and Processional, 138: In exitu Chori. Responsorium.

Beata es, Maria, quæ Dominum portasti creatorem mundi. Genuisti qui te fecit, et in æternum permanes virgo. York Manual and Processional, 140. York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 85: ... introivit per aurem virginis in regionem nostram indutus stola purpurea. Et exivit per auream portam lux et decus universæ fabricæ mundi. York Manual and Processional, 141–2: Quem æthera et terra atque mare non prævalet totum capere, Asinæ præsepe infans implens, cælos regens, ubera sugens. Factor matris natus hodie creatus est de matre. Creans diem hodie creatus in diem. Nascitur mundi Oricus, Gabriel quem vocavit Emmanuel, Nobiscum Deus. York Missal, vol. 1, 14: Deus, qui hanc sacratissimam noctem veri luminis fecisti illustratione clarescere: da nobis, quæsumus, ut cujus lucis mysteria in terra cognovimus, ejus quoque gaudiis in cælis perfruamur.

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All hosts sing dutifully to the new-born Lord, Stringing together skilfully-modulated melodies, syllable by syllable, On this sacred day, on which new joys are fully bestowed upon the world. On this night a sublime glory, too, thundered forth in the angelic voice, And dreadful lights shone in the middle of the night to the shepherds, While they care for their flocks suddenly they receive divine instructions. ‘He is born from the kindly Virgin, he who existed before the ages; There is great glory in heaven, and peace on earth.’ Thus therefore the heavenly band rejoices most exaltedly, And with so great a song the high machine of heaven resounds. And in this day of glory let it sound out through all things, given back with clear voice. Let all things human sing out that God is born on earth. And the enemy’s cruellest dominion is shattered: Peace has been restored on earth, now let all things be glad at the birth of the Son, Who alone created all things, Who alone protects all things, May he in his loving-kindness absolve all our sins. 17

Light and dark imagery also pervades the Sequence in the second Mass, at dawn, as Christ is perceived as a sun born from a star: The Angel of counsel is born of the Virgin, the sun of a star. A sun knowing no setting, a star always shining, always bright. Just as the sun produces a ray, the Virgin produces a son in the same way … 18 17

York Missal, vol. 1, 15:

Nato canunt omnia Domino pie agmina, Syllabatim pneumata perstringendo organica, Hac die sacrata, in qua nova sunt gaudia mundo plene reddita. Hac nocte præcelsa intonuit et gloria in voce angelica. Fulserunt et immania nocte media pastoribus lumina. Dum fovent sua pecora subito diva percipiunt monita, Natum alma Virgine, qui extat ante sæcula; Est immensa in cælo gloria, pax et in terra. Sic ergo cæli caterva altissime jubilat, Et tanto canore crepat alta poli machina. Sonet et per omnia hac in die gloria voce clara reddita. Humana concrepent cuncta Deum natum in terra. Confracta sunt et imperia hostis crudelissima; Pax in terra reddita, nunc lætentur omnia Nati per exordia. Solus qui condidit omnia, Solus qui tuetur omnia, Ipse sua pietate solvat omnia peccata nostra.

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Light imagery suffuses not only the dialogue of the York Nativity pageant but its action. Joseph’s first comment on the interior of the stable, prompting his departure in search of light, is: Þan wolde I fayne we had sum light, What so befall. It waxis right myrke vnto my sight, And colde withall. I will go gete vs light forthy, And fewell fande with me to bryng.

39–44

Of course when he returns to the stable, the first thing he notices is the light shining from it: A, lord God, what light is þis Þat comes shynyng þus sodenly?

78–9

And later, once he has seen the baby he quickly returns to the question: Me merueles mekill of þis light Þat þus-gates shynes in þis place, Forsuth, it is a selcouth sight.

92–4

Mary explains that the light comes from the star, following the prophecy of Balaam, and Joseph then greets the child, calling him amongst other things, ‘lemer of light’ (‘shining one’: 111). Meg Twycross pointed out in an article exploring why the Virgin’s face was said to shine, that ‘the vocabulary of divine revelation uses the term “illumination”, which is again given expression in stories where divine beings appear to humans, and those in which humans become quasi-divine’. 19 The fundamentally metaphorical prophecy of the Incarnation in Isaiah 9: 2 20 is just the most prominent of many of the prophecies of Christ’s coming as an influx of light. These, combined with the star which is part of the materiality of the Nativity narrative, mean that light and darkness, both literally and metaphorically read, are central to all representations and celebrations of the event. These then are the dominant images contained within the offices for the three Masses on Christmas Day, and in the accompanying Processional, but what is really interesting in relation to possible readings of the pageant and particularly its function within the celebration of Corpus Christi, is the fact that there are three Masses, and that that is the way in which the liturgy for Christmas Day acknowledges the fundamental relationship between Incarnation and 18

York Missal, vol. 1, 17:

Angelus consilii natus est de virgine, sol de stella. Sol occasum nesciens, stella semper rutilans, semper clara. Sicut sidus radium, profert virgo filium, pari forma. 19 Twycross, ‘”As the Sun with his Beams”‘, 42. 20 Populus qui ambulabat in tenebris vidit lucem magnam; habitantibus in regione umbræ mortis, lux orta est eis.

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sacrament. The infant in the manger was not only the eternal Deity come to the temporal realm and made flesh. Nor is it simply that the future history of the baby’s life and death will make eternal life available to all humankind. The Christmas liturgy goes beyond that to explore the mystical fact that the offer of salvation is constantly renewed and participated in by the congregation through the process of ingesting the Host at Mass. This is the full import of the celebration of Christmas in the forms of worship current in York when the pageants were written and performed. Those elements of the Proper of the Mass of course make a direct connection between the event celebrated in the feast and the act of communion. For example, the postcommunion of the Mass on the Vigil of the Nativity reads: Grant to us, Lord, we beg, to be refreshed by considering again the Nativity of your Only-begotten Son, by whose celestial mystery we are given food and drink. Through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son. 21

The Secret at the Mass at Cock-crow again connects the offertory with the day’s topic: Lord, we beg that the offering of today’s festivity may be acceptable to you, that, granted by your grace, through these most sacred transactions we may be found in the form of the one in whom our substance is one with you, Jesus Christ your Son, our Lord 22

and the Secret at the second Mass connects the offertory with Luke’s account of the apparition to the shepherds, overtly linking the mystery of the Deity made flesh of the Incarnation to the consecration of the Host which is about to be witnessed by the communicant clergy: May our gifts, we beg, Lord, prove appropriate for the mysteries of today’s nativity: so that, just as born a man he shone forth as God, thus may this earthly substance confer upon us that which is divine. 23 21

22

23

York Missal, vol. 1, 13–14:

Da nobis, Domine, quæsumus, Unigeniti Filii tui recensita nativitate respirare cujus cælesti mysterio pascimur et potamur. Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum Filium tuum. York Missal, vol. 1, 15: Accepta tibi sit, Domine, quæsumus, hodiernæ festivitatis oblatio, ut, tua gratia largiente, per hæc sacrosancta commercia in illius inveniamur forma, in quo tecum est nostra substantia, Jesus Christus Filius tuus Dominus noster. York Missal, vol. 1, 17: Munera nostra, quæsumus, Domine, nativitatis hodiernæ mysteriis apta proveniant: ut sicut homo genitus idem refulsit Deus, sic nobis hæc terrena substantia conferat quod divinum est.

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Finally the postcommunion seals the connection between sacrament and Nativity in the following terms: Lord, we beg, may the new nativity (literally: natal newness) of this sacrament always restore us, whose unique nativity has repulsed our old humanity (literally: human oldness). 24 The Proper of the Mass, by customarily making its verbal connection between the Gospel and communion, seems to have supplied the author of the York pageant of the Nativity with a particular way of presenting the event. In Chapter 1 we saw that the speeches both Mary and Joseph utter to greet the Christ-child are closely akin to the vernacular paraliturgical lyric verses with which the laity was encouraged to welcome Christ at the moment of the Elevation of the Host, the climactic moment for lay members of a congregation who did not regularly receive the sacrament. We saw how these special lyrics of greeting occur throughout the cycle when mortals come into contact with Christ, demonstrating the inherently, and unsurprisingly, sacramental nature of the cycle of pageants devised for performance at the feast which celebrates the sacrament itself. If we can accept that premise, we can see further that the little Nativity pageant itself has an inherently sacramental meaning. If this is the case, it in turn may explain the increasingly simplified form which the pageant seems to have taken between the 1415 Ordo paginarum and the later Register from which we have inherited the script. To begin with, if we accept a sacramental reading of the Nativity in its special relationship with the feast of Corpus Christi, lines 90–1, where Joseph says, Wele is me I bade þis day To se þis foode

are no longer problematic, and foode needs no glossing, although the pun on the word, which can also mean ‘child’, is typical of the decorous economy of the text. More importantly, however, this reading can offer an explanation for the central focus on the moment of the birth and an indication of how it might have been staged. It is generally suggested that the child was born to Mary while she knelt in prayer, and that the doll that represented the infant was revealed on the floor in front of her from within the folds of her cloak. 25 It seems entirely plausible then to suggest that the moment the doll appeared, Mary, with her back to the audience, picked it up with both hands and elevated it in the manner of the celebrant at Mass, before uttering her words of greeting. 24

25

York Missal, vol. 1, 18,

Hujus nos, Domine, quæsumus, sacramenti semper novitas natalis instauret: cujus nativitas singularis humanam repulit vestustatem. E.g. Woolf, English Mystery Plays, 180–1.

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The offices for the Hours in the Breviary unsurprisingly offer supporting evidence of how all these emphases – the fulfilment of prophecy, the collapsing of time, the influx of light, the sacramental nature of the child – are deeply rooted in worship. Again what is suggested is that one need go no further in seeking an understanding of the event as it was inherited by the milieu in which the pageant was written. Within the Christmas period, there are numerous references to Christ shining like a lamp, and at Vespers on Christmas Eve in particular to the manger shining. The whole process started by the Doctor who opens the Annunciation pageant is summarised in the understanding conveyed by the hymn at Compline: Behold the one of whom seers sung in ancient ages, whom the faithful pages of the prophets had promised, shines forth, long ago promised ... 26

But the crux of the sacramental nature of the Nativity re-emerges at the third Nocturn, in the eighth reading, attributed to Bede: When the Lord, the Saviour, had been born in Bethlehem – as the sacred story of the Gospel attests – to shepherds who were in the same region keeping their watch by night over their flock, the angel of the Lord appeared with a great light, and declared that the Sun of justice had risen upon the world, not only with the voice of heavenly speech, but indeed with the brightness of divine light too. And it is also fitting that he is born in Bethlehem, since Bethlehem is translated as ‘house of bread’. For it is he who says, ‘I am the living bread who came down from heaven’. 27

The same themes are reprised at Sext, and at Nones he is referred to as the New Adam, cleansing that which the Old Adam defiled. At Vespers, prior to the final saying of the Magnificat, the beautiful fifthcentury hymn by Caelius Sedulius, A solis ortus cardine, finally reprises the whole mystical meaning of the narrative of the Nativity: From the point of the rising of the sun and as far as the end of the earth let us sing of Christ our Prince, born from the Virgin Mary.

26

27

York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 76: Ecce quem vates vetustis concinebant seculis quem prophetarum fideles pagine spoponderant emicat promissus olim … York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 83: Nato in bethleem domino salvatore: sicut sacra evangelii testatur historia. Pastoribus qui in regione eadem erant vigilantes vigilias noctis super gregem suum: angelus domini magna cum luce apparuit: Exortumque mundo solem justicie: non solum celestis voce sermonis: verumetiam claritate divine lucis astruxit. Qui bene etiam in bethleem nascitur. Bethleem quippe domus panis interpretatur. Ipse namque est qui ait: Ego sum panis vivus qui de celo descendi.

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The blessed Maker of the world has put on a servant’s body, in order to free flesh from flesh, lest he lose those whom he created. Celestial grace enters the womb of the chaste parent; the girl’s womb carries secrets which she had not known. The house of the chaste breast suddenly becomes the temple of God; undefiled, not knowing a man, she has conceived the Son by the Word. In childbirth she has brought forth the one whom Gabriel had foretold, whom John, enclosed in his mother’s womb, had sensed, rejoicing. He suffered himself to lie in hay and did not abhor the manger, and fed on a little milk: he, through whom not a bird goes hungry. The heavenly choir rejoices and the angels sing to God; the Shepherd, the Creator of all, is made known to the shepherds. Glory to you, O Lord. 28

The Breviary may have formed no part of worship for the laity, but given the probability that the pageants were written by clerics, these texts further reinforce this view of how the Incarnation and Nativity were read by the Church at the time. Though the York Nativity pageant achieves an immediacy that convinces the audience that the events they are witnessing are real, it is not ‘realistic’. Babies do not glow in the dark. Various accounts may have influenced the dramatist who seems to have been striving to create a communal experience for the audience not unlike that aimed at by the individual contemplative. Affective piety has its own special connection with the historical events of the life of Christ, promoting contemplative techniques which transport the believer back in time to the special historical moments between Incarnation and Passion. Gospel harmonies such as Love’s Mirror pursue an agenda of rendering the material details of those special events ‘real’ for the reader, and books of revelations, such as those of St Bridget, or Juliana of Norwich, purport to be accounts of the experience of attaining a state in which 28

York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 88. It is an alphabetical acrostic: A solis ortus cardine et usque terre limitem Christum canamus principem: natum maria virgine. Beatus auctor seculi servile corpus induit: ut carne carnem liberet: ne perderet quos condidit. Caste parentis viscera celestis intrat gratia: venter puelle bajulat: secreta que non noverat. Domus pudici

pectoris templum repente fit dei: intacta nesciens virum: concepit verbo filium. Enixa es puerpera quem Gabriel predixerat: quem matris alvo gestiens clausus Johannes senserat. Feno jacere pertulit presepe non abhorruit: parvoque lacte pastus est: per quem nec ales esurit. Gaudet chorus celestium: et angeli canunt deo: palamque fit pastoribus: pastor creator omnium. Gloria tibi domine. For the poem, see Joseph Connelly, Hymns of the Roman Liturgy (London and New York: Longmans, Green, 1957), 56–7.

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the individual fulfilled her mystical ambition of being present at the events in question. But a common source of all such writing lies in the understanding of events made available through patterns of worship and codified in the liturgy. The York Nativity uses the imagery relating to the Christ-child from the special liturgy of Christmas to create a pageant whose immediacy is intimately associated with the act of communion. It is, therefore, closely attuned to the overall project of celebrating the feast of Corpus Christi. In addition to its role as the festive commemoration of the birth of Christ, Christmas Day in secular British and American society is celebrated by gift-giving, a commemoration of the gifts given by the Magi, or Three Kings, to the infant in the manger. This practice elides two distinct liturgical feasts associated with the nativity of Christ which remain separate in, for example, Spanish culture: there Christ’s birth is celebrated on Christmas Day, 25 December, but presents are given and received on ‘Kings’ Day’, 6 January. This second celebration is Twelfth Night, the traditional date on which the Magi arrived at the Bethlehem stable, the feast known liturgically as Epiphany. Epiphany was in the Middle Ages, and still is in a number of ecclesiastical centres, the occasion for elaborate extra-liturgical processions and secular festivities involving the whole community of believers. In late medieval court circles, Twelfth Night was an occasion for banqueting, masqueing, and plays. 29 Epiphany, meaning ‘manifestation’ or ‘appearing’, is a term originally associated variously with the Nativity itself and with Christ’s Baptism, but always focusing on Christ’s divinity. By the late Middle Ages it was commonly accepted as referring specifically to Twelfth Night, celebrating the recognition of Christ’s birth by the Gentiles in the form of the Three Kings or Magi. 30 It closes the Christmas season but is also the first of a chain of festivals celebrating theophany, the manifestation of the divine. According to Christian belief, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son, had both divine and human natures or properties. He lived as a man on earth for thirty-three years, but on a number of occasions his divine nature was manifested by supernatural signs or events. The star which guided the Magi to Bethlehem is one of these manifestations. As a revelation of Christ’s divinity, Epiphany is thematically linked to the Presentation at the Temple, celebrated ritually at Candlemas, and to the Baptism in Jordan, but is also connected with a number of other events in his adult life which are dramatised in the York Cycle and

29 Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 15–16. 30 For the Magi as Gentiles, see for example the homily of Gregory adopted as the 7th reading at the third Nocturn – York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 165.

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were discussed in preceding chapters. 31 To summarise the Golden Legend, the word epiphany comes from epi ‘above’ and phanos, ‘appearing’, because the star appeared from above after Christ’s birth. On the same day twenty-nine years later the whole Trinity appeared (Father in words, Son in flesh, Holy Ghost as a dove) when he was baptised in Jordan. Exactly a year later Christ changed water into wine, and (probably) exactly a year after that he miraculously fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes (Matthew 14: 13–21). 32 As far as the liturgy itself for the double feast of Epiphany is concerned, the York Processional insists that there should always be a procession with responses, proses, versicles, and prayers on 6 January on whatever day it falls, replicating the one for Christmas Day. 33 Unfortunately it gives few ‘stage directions’, but those for the Sarum Use translate as follows: At the said sixth hour the procession is to go down the middle of the choir through the west door, circling the choir, as in all other double feasts during the year, by which it will enter through the church, and thus the procession will go round the cloister in this order [there follows the order in which the various clergy etc. are to process]. 34 Much of what happens in the processional celebration of Epiphany repeats the liturgy for Christmas. Once again the Virgin is venerated, and the mystical nature of Christ’s conception and birth is described. There are recollections of the Fall and the consequent need for redemption. The collect for Epiphany, however, focuses on manifestation and witness, asking that the news of the birth of God’s son in the flesh may liberate humankind. The final element also differs from Christmas. At Christmas the response and versicle were based on the Gospel of the main Mass, which speaks of the nativity of Christ as the Word made flesh (John 1: 14), but at Epiphany the focus again changes and draws on Luke 3: 21–2. 35 This account of how the Holy Ghost descended at the moment when Christ was baptised in Jordan and acknowledged him as the son of God is a declaration of Christ’s divinity of a different order. John’s account is the assertion of a witness 31 See St Augustine’s fourth sermon on the Epiphany, Sermo 202, cap. 2 (PL 38, cols 1033–5), and Love, Mirror, ed. Sargent, 43–4. 32 Voragine, Golden Legend, vol. 1, 78–9. 33 York Manual and Processional, 143. 34 York Manual and Processional, 138, note. Dicta hora sexta eat Processio per medium Chori per ostium occidentale circueundo Chorum, ut in omnibus aliis Festis Duplicibus per annum, quo ingredietur per Ecclesiam, et sic eat Processio circa claustrum hoc ordine. I am grateful to Shelagh Sneddon for this observation. 35 York Manual and Processional, 143; York Breviary, vol. 1, 167–8. In Sarum, but not in York, this is presented as a separate Mass for the night of Epiphany (Sarum Missal, cols 82–4).

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to the divinity of Christ while Luke’s is a narrative account of a supernatural event through which that divinity was manifested. The paradox of the humanity and divinity of the Bethlehem baby, ruling the heavens and suckling at breasts, the Maker of the mother, created from the mother, which is central to the Christmas liturgy, is then repeated, but reinforced in this new context of accumulated narrative evidence. Finally the offertory, taken from Psalm 71: 10 (AV Psalm 72), is the prophecy that the king’s son will be given gifts by the kings of Tarshish, the islands, Arabia, and Sheba, and that all the nations will pay tribute to him. 36 It is from this psalm that the common identification of the Magi as kings is taken. The Postcommunion celebrates the fact that on this day God revealed his only-begotten to the nations (i.e. the Gentiles), led by a star, and asks that the intercessors who already know him through faith may be led to contemplate Christ’s exaltedness. The symbolic significations of Epiphany are deeply embedded in the special liturgy for the day and include images of illumination. As with Christmas, light plays an important part not only in the imagery associated with Epiphany but also in its physical celebration in which the star is central. Light is the simplest symbolic way of representing the showing of the divine in the human world. The very first entry in the Records of Early English Drama volumes for York is a tantalising reference to a dramatic or quasi-dramatic activity taking place between 1220 and 1225 in celebration of the arrival of the shepherds at the crib on Christmas night, and in celebration of Epiphany: Item, someone shall contrive stars with all things pertaining to them, except for the rush-lights(?) which the future boy bishop shall acquire: one on Christmas night for the shepherds and two on Epiphany night if the presentation of the Three Kings is to be done. 37

Exactly how stars were to be contrived, both here and in the cycle, is a matter of speculation. Clearly the light of the star is important and may have involved some pyrotechnic effects. Epiphany also has a thematic emphasis on journeys of exile and return. These were rendered symbolically in paraliturgical activity such as the Ordo Stellae, a quasi-drama performed in numerous collegiate churches all over medieval Europe. 38 The journey following the 36

York Missal, vol. 1, 33:

Reges Tharsis et insulæ munera offerent: reges Arabum et Saba dona adducent: et adorabunt eum omnes reges terræ, omnes gentes servient ei. 37 REED: York, vol. 1, 1; translation adapted from vol. 2, 687: Item inueniet stellas cum omnibus ad illas pertinencibus preter cirpos quos inueniet episcopus puerorum futurorum vnam in nocte Natalis domini pro pastoribus & duas in nocte Epiphanie si debeat fieri presentacio trium Regum. 38 See for example the instances cited by Karl Young in Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 2, 29–124.

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starogave the occasion a specifically processional character. The processional mode is, however, also more widely associated with manifestation, as in the Corpus Christi procession itself, where the symbolic ‘evidence’ of the presence of the divine in the everyday world is carried about amongst the community to be the better seen. In lay contexts Epiphany is important as Christ’s first manifestation of the contrast between earthly and heavenly power, but it was also and primarily the annual occasion for gift-giving, ceremonially associated with the offertory of the Mass. The liturgy was embellished comparatively early in some places by gift-giving or gift-offering ceremonies, particularly oblatio populi or ‘offerings of the people’, which provided the congregation with an opportunity to make gifts to their church in the form of food, wax, oil, clothing, and ornaments, as well as money. There were also, and separately, gifts of bread and wine for use at Mass. This ceremonial accompanied an embellished offertory to provide time for the gift-giving ceremony, and might include three cantors dressed as the Magi leading the procession with their gifts to the altar which might have a star hung on a cord above it. The only surviving example of a Latin play of this type focusing on the Magi comes from Limoges, but Karl Young believed that this type of ceremonial was a relatively commonplace development as embellished liturgies from elsewhere suggest. 39 The difficulty for the modern reader lies in trying to reconstruct the effect of such examples. In a large collegiate church the ceremony involving three priests dressed as Magi would have taken place in the choir, and, whether it preceded, followed, or occurred simultaneously with the oblatio populi, it might not have been seen by the congregation at all. In addition to such dramatic developments within the Mass, however, there were later developments which stood outside the office itself and would have been witnessed by the entire congregation. These include the Officium Stellae which preceded the Mass in, for example Rouen, and involved clergy dressed as each of the Three Kings coming from different directions within the church to converge with kisses of greeting, and processing to an altar on which there was a representation of the Bethlehem manger over which hung a star. 40 The most striking tropes in the Latin tradition, rivalling the Quem quaeritis, were those in which the character of Herod came to be developed, of which there is a comparatively large number of survivors, most famously the Fleury Ordo ad representandum Herodem, an ambitious composition amalgamating several distinct elements from the Christmas season in a sustained dramatic narrative. 41 It involved an extensive cast, including midwives and soldiers, and a large amount of movement, including 39 40 41

Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 2, 32–42. Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 2, 42–50. Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 2, 84–92.

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processions of shepherds, Magi, Herod’s soldier, the mothers of the Innocents, and the Holy Family on its escape into Egypt, with stage rubrics referring to how all this movement was blocked and oriented within the church. 42 Herod’s raging also became an increasing set-piece feature of these plays until it ‘invaded parts of the liturgy where his violence was an unseemly intrusion only to be tolerated under the general spirit of misrule prevailing during the Christmas season’. 43 The special festive nature of Epiphany in all these various dimensions goes some way to explain the distinctive characteristics of the York pageant on the same subject in the Register. Herod and the Magi (XVI) was a composite production, the Masons’ guild being responsible for Herod, the Goldsmiths’ for the Magi, although originally the Goldsmiths took responsibility for both elements. Uniquely in the Register’s version of the cycle, it is an episode performed on two pageant wagons, one representing Herod’s court, the other the Bethlehem stable, with the Three Kings (Rex 1, Rex II, and Rex III), commuting between the two. This organisational arrangement immediately foregrounds the meaning of the event as an actual and a symbolic journey. This is a relatively complicated piece of theatre for the production circumstances of the York Play, for performance involves processional movement within the action of the pageant, and clearly reflects the special liturgical activity associated with the feast of Epiphany. The use of two wagons, one representing Herod’s court with, presumably, considerable external display, drawn up opposite the other, representing the Bethlehem stable, gives us rather more indication of the likely blocking of the pageant. The management of the action is also markedly reminiscent of the theatrical practices of the drama of the medieval church, where side-chapels and aisles were used as the locus and platea respectively. These two types of location performed different functions, the first being the point of display and visual reference for an individual character or group of characters, the other involving processional activity in which order and direction of proceeding were symbolically significant. The stark contrast in the appearance of the two wagons or loci would further have offered an instantly accessible visual statement about the relative nature of earthly as against heavenly power, represented respectively by Herod’s throne and by the Bethlehem manger. The pattern of repetition and variation on the Christmas liturgy throws into relief one of the major significations of the feast which is 42 For an analysis of the theatrical properties of the Ordo ad representandum Herodem see Fletcher Collins, The Production of Medieval Church Music-Drama

(Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1972), 129–42. 43 Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 2, 99. Young goes on to cite an example from Padua which is translated into English in Medieval Popular Religion 1000–1500: A Reader, ed. John Shinners (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 1997), 277–8.

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manifested in both Latin and vernacular drama, partly in the stock characterisation of the Three Kings but in particular of Herod and his court. One of the major themes celebrated at Epiphany is the manifestation of God in human form to the Gentiles. The first manifestation was to the shepherds, who were of course Jews, but the irrational Gentiles have to be further cajoled by signs. The seventh to ninth Lessons at the third Nocturn for Epiphany in the Breviary are taken from a homily by Gregory the Great: As you heard in the gospel reading, dearly beloved brothers, when the King of heaven was born the king of the earth was disturbed: for earthly loftiness is certainly confounded when the heavenly majesty is revealed. But we should ask what it means that, when the Redeemer was born, an angel appeared to the shepherds in Judea, and not an angel but a star guided the Magi from the east to adore him. Namely this: that to the Jews as to those using reason a rational animal, that is an angel, ought to proclaim; but the Gentiles, because they did not know how to use reason to recognise the Lord, are guided not by a voice but by signs. 44

Herod is one of the few biblical personae whose name is accompanied by an adjective in the liturgy. He is repeatedly the ‘impious enemy’ in the hymn, but his reputation comes chiefly from the Feast of the Innocents, where he is described as iratus in the memorial antiphon at Lauds, repeated on the Octave of St Stephen: Furious Herod killed many boys in Bethlehem of Judea, the city of David. 45

The first sentence of Gregory’s sermon is a most apt gloss on the pageant’s opening manifestation of ‘earthly loftiness’ which, however, is confounded by the simple measure of sending the Kings home another way. The liturgical characterisation of Herod, therefore, probably contributed something of the traditional irascibility to the character of the raging Herod of the vernacular drama. But the York Herod is more than irascible, he tips over into the realms of the burlesque fool-king. In medieval theology, folly is synonymous with spiritual blindness, but Herod’s character may have been reinforced by 44

45

York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 165: Sicut in lectione evangelica audistis fratres charissimi: celi rege nato: rex terre turbatus est: quia nimirum terrena altitudo confunditur: cum celsitudo celestis aperitur. Sed querendum est nobis quidnam sit quod redemptore nato pastoribus in judea angelus apparuit: atque adorandum hunc ab oriente magos: non angelus sed stella perduxit? Quia videlicet judeis tanquam ratione utentibus rationale animal: id est angelus predicare debuit: gentiles vero quia uti ratione nesciebant ad cognoscendum dominum: non per vocem: sed per signa perducuntur. York Breviary, vol. 1, cols. 118, 147: Herodes iratus occidit multos pueros in Bethlehem jude civitate david.

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specific practices of seasonal misrule which accreted to Twelfth Night celebrations in England. A burlesque ‘king’ for Twelfth Night was selected for the night’s revels by Edward II and Edward III. They concealed a dried bean in a cake and conferred the honour, ‘King of the Bean’ on whoever found it in his slice. The custom was still being practised at Merton College, Oxford, at the end of the fifteenth century, and the burlesque ‘king’ figure became institutionalised as part of the Christmas Lords of Misrule ceremony in the sixteenth century. 46 The burlesque king was, of course, rendered powerless after his brief reign. Herod, and burlesque displays of powerless kingship, are contrasted at Epiphany with the presentation of the Three Kings. Nicholas Love, having rehearsed the orthodox theological significance of Epiphany, presents his readers with an extended contemplation of the visit of the Kings to the stable which presents a picture for ‘oure mynde & our þouht’ of the correct and decorous behaviour of earthly kingship in the company of the divine: þees þre kynges comen with gret multitude & a wirchipful company of lordes & oþer seruantes, & so by token of þe Sterre firste | ledyng & after restyng vp on þat place, þat þe child Jesus was inne’. þere þei li3ted done of þe dromedaries þei rydene vpon’. byfore þat simple house & maner of stable in þe which oure lord Jesus was born. And þan oure lady heryng gret noys, & stiryng of peple’. anone toke hire swete child in to hir barme, & þei coming in to þat house, als so soon as þei seene þe child’. þei kneled done & reuerently & deuoutly honoured him as kyng, & wirchiped him as god. Lord god how gret & how sadde was here feiþ & byleue, þat sich a litel child so simple cloþed, fonden with so pore a modere in so abiecte a place withoute cumpanye, withoute meyny & without al worldly aray shold be verrey god & kyng & lord of al þe world’. & naþeles þei byleued soþefastly boþe two. 47

What Love conjures for the mind’s eye is a full picture of three medieval kings, complete with their retinues, first processing to the stable then engaging in an act of pious but regal devotion to the Christchild. Almost a century ago, Émile Mâle accounted for the uniformity of iconography of the same scene in late medieval religious art to the uniformity of what he called mystery plays, but extends to include civic ceremonial all over Europe. 48 He paid particular attention to an Ronald Hutton, The Making of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) 60; Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter, Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 95, 162–4. 47 Love, Mirror, ed. Sargent, 44–5. 48 Émile Mâle, Religious Art in France: The Late Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Iconography and its Sources, ed. Harry Bober, trans. Marthiel Mathews (Bollingen Series 90: 3; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986, trans. from 46

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early-fourteenth-century Milanese Epiphany Procession, another in Padua in 1417, and another in Florence in 1454, all of which involved several months of preparation and proved very popular with the citizenry of their respective homes. Mâle saw the process as one whereby liturgical drama first enriched a biblical event, then it was ‘expanded by the Italians into a triumphal procession’, which in turn influenced representations of the original biblical event in the visual arts. The description in Nicholas Love’s text has all the richness of contemporary visual representations of the scene such as that by Gentile da Fabriano, dated to 1423, where the whole cavalcade accompanying the Kings in procession can be seen winding its way in the distance, but may well have reflected theatrical and ceremonial representations of the event from nearer home. There is no reason why the network of influences Émile Mâle identified for Italian art should not have worked also in the North of England, except that we might now see liturgical ceremonial, civic drama and procession, visual art, and vernacular commentary in both contexts as having more reciprocal relationships with one another. In England we also catch glimpses of customary court celebrations of Epiphany in the account of the City of London’s reconciliation with Richard II in 1392/93 in the Westminster Chronicle, on which occasion the king was presented with a dromedary ridden by a boy. 49 Richard II had a very particular relationship with Epiphany as he was born on that day in 1367. The arrangement of the figures in the Wilton Diptych, where Richard is shown kneeling before the Virgin and Child with the Baptist, St Edmund, and St Edward the Confessor standing behind him, has been read as suggesting parallels with the visit of the Magi. 50 Moreover Richard II was not the only monarch to invite such comparisons, and nearer to the date of the York Register is the Horae of Étienne Chevalier, Grand Treasurer of France, attributed to Jean Fouquet. Fouquet conceived this Book of Hours long before he began to work at it. Round each central picture, illustrating some incident from the life of Christ or the Virgin or some other important story from the Bible, he painted scenes of the places he and his patron had known in the king’s service – Touraine and Italy, the castle of Vincennes, the streets of Paris. And, where it was appropriate, he portrayed people of his time – fifth edition of L’art religieux de la fin du môyen âge en France, Paris: Colin, 1949), 64–6. 49 Twycross and Carpenter, Masks, 158. 50 Dillian Gordon and others, Making and Meaning: The Wilton Diptych (London: National Gallery, 1993), 57, note 99. 6 January was also the feast of Richard’s patron saint, John the Baptist, and the king is recorded as having received a dish on which the saint’s head had been placed after his decollation as a gift from the rector of All Saints’, Pavement, in York in 1386 (Wilton Diptych, 56).

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among the suppliants at the feet of the Virgin is Étienne Chevalier himself, and the Three Kings coming to Bethlehem are King Charles VII and his two sons. 51 Fouquet’s miniature has a particular kind of selfreferentiality, where the representation of a biblical event contrivedly validates its patrons by association, and where role-play in civic ceremonial provides the mediating language. Although there is no evidence that the City of York, as opposed to the Minster, engaged in ceremonial activity at Epiphany, at the period of the plays the feast customarily carried with it opportunities for sanctifying its participants and the spaces they occupied. The York dramatist, therefore, may have seen opportunities in the re-presentation of the events of Epiphany to carry over those associations as part of the sanctificatory activity of Corpus Christi. The focus on influxes of light in representations of Epiphany is predominantly liturgical, coming principally from the Mass for the Vigil, which directly echoes the Christmas Mass at dawn. 52 The special Sequence, should Epiphany Eve fall on a Sunday, repeats the Christmas Mass at dawn, reaching back into Old Testament prophecy, and comparing Christ’s birth from the Virgin to the birth of the sun from a star, a sun which knows no setting from a star which is always bright. 53 At Epiphany, then, the star becomes the particular focus, invoked in the collect as a symbol of perpetual revelation through which Christ’s manifest Nativity is revealed to the minds of believers. On the day of Epiphany itself, the imagery of the star as a symbol of revelation is repeated, while the Sequence offers a special narrative which, translated, reads: Let us sing the glorious Epiphany of the Lord, On which the Magi adore the Son of God, Whose boundless power the Chaldeans have revered through the ages, Whom all the prophets have sung as one who will come to save the nations, Whose majesty has humbled itself to such an extent as to take on the form of a slave: He who was God before time and ages has been made Man in Mary. The section to be sung on the second day starts here. About whom Balaam, prophesying, said: a shining star will go forth from Jacob,

51 Jean Fouquet, The Hours of Etienne Chevalier, Musée Condé, Chantilly, preface Charles Sterling, introduction and legends Claude Schaefer (London: Thames and Hudson, 1972), 16, 18, plate 2; Roland Collection of Films and Videos on Art, http://www.roland-collection.com/rolandcollection/section/27/210.htm. 52 York Missal, vol. 1, 31. 53 See page 100 above.

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And will crush the armies of the leaders of the region of Moab with immense power. To him the Magi bring splendid gifts, gold together with incense and myrrh. With incense they proclaim a god, with gold a great king, a mortal man with myrrh. In dreams the angel warns them not to return to the king disturbed on account of realms. For he greatly feared the new-born king, afraid to lose the rights/laws of his realm.

The section to be sung on the third day starts here.

The Magi, with the star shining before them, gladly continue along the ways which led them to their own country, abandoning the commands of Herod, who, struck to the heart with great anger, forthwith orders the troops of infants to be sought out throughout the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, and soon orders them deprived of life. Let every throng now join its ringing song to the praises, with skilfully-modulated melody, Mystically offering Christ, the King of kings, precious gifts, Asking that throughout the world he might protect all realms eternally. 54

This Sequence combines the understanding of the Nativity of Christ as the culmination of prophecy, the centre-point of time, with an affirmation of the power of the Deity as conqueror and outwitter of Herod but also as eternal protector of a world that extends beyond Judea. The imagery of light emanating from the star, central to Ordo 54

York Missal, vol. 1, 32:

Epiphaniam Domino canamus gloriosam, / Qua prolem Dei Magi adorant, / Immensam Chaldæi cujus per sæcla venerantur potentiam: / Quem cuncti prophetæ cecinere venturum ad gentes salvandas, / Cujus majestas ita est inclinata, ut assumeret servi formam: / Ante sæcula qui Deus et tempora Homo factus est in Maria. Secundo die. Balaam de quo vaticinans, Exibit ex Jacob rutilans, inquit, stella, / Et confringet ducum agmina regionis Moab maxima potentia, / Huic magi munera deferunt præclara, aurum simul, thus, et myrrham, / Thure Deum prædicant, auro regem magnum, hominem mortalem myrrha. / In somnis hos monet angelus, ne redeant ad regem commotum propter regna. / Pavebat etenim nimium regem natum, verens amittere regni jura.

Tertio die.

Magi sibi stella micante prævia pergunt alacres itinera patriam quæ eos ducebant ad propriam; linquentes Herodis mandata. / Qui percussus corde nimia præ ira extemplo mandate infantium agmina inquiri Bethlehem per confinia, et mox privari eos vita. / Omnis nunc caterva tinnulum jungat laudibus organi pneuma, / Mystice offerens Regi regum Christo munera preciosa, / Poscens ut per orbem regna omnia protegat in sæcula sempiterna.

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Stellae theatricals, is the pervasive signifier of manifestation, and recurs in the York pageant from the moment of the First King’s greeting to Herod: The lorde þat lenys þis lastand light Whilke has vs ledde oute of oure lande, Kepe þe, sir kyng and comly knight … 153–5

The benighted nature of Herod’s court is further signalled by the problem the Kings have rediscovering the star when they have left him: I Rex A, sirs, for sight what shall I say? Whare is oure syne? I se it noth. II Rex No more do I. Nowe dar I lay In oure wendyng som wrange is wroght. III Rex Vnto þat prince I rede we praye, That till vs sente his syngne vnsoght, Þat he wysse vs in redy way So frendly þat we fynde hym moght. I Rex A, siris, I se it stande Aboven where he is borne, Lo, here is þe house at hande, 273–84 We haue no3t myste þis morne. These speeches, which are in the Goldsmiths’ section of the pageant only, clearly involve movement across the set from the wagon representing Herod’s court to that representing the Bethlehem stable, but they also demand the spectacular reappearance of the star. The significance of the star to this pageant cannot be ignored any more than can the unavoidable fact that it was performed on a midsummer’s morning in broad daylight. A number of devices would have been available to the pageant’s production team, from mirrors and lenses – rather hit-and-miss should the day be dull – to some sort of fairly spectacular pyrotechnic device, which seems on balance the likeliest solution. As we have seen, the occasion had found its way into popular and secular celebration as an occasion of gift-giving, but it is to the liturgy and to patristic writing that we look to find the particular symbolic significance of each of the Magi’s gifts. The Golden Legend records four different interpretations of the gifts, 55 but the simple one embedded in the liturgical Sequence, gold for royalty, incense for divinity, and myrrh for mortality, 56 is the one taken up by the author of the pageant: Rex I … Hayll, clene þat is comen of a kynges kynde, And shall be kyng of þis kyth, all clergy has kende. And sith it shall worþe on þis wise, 55 56

Voragine, Golden Legend, vol. 1, 83. York Missal, vol. 1, 32: Thure deum praedicant, auro regem magnum, hominem mortalem myrrha.

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Thyselffe haue I soght sone, I say þe, With golde þat is grettest of price; Be paied of þis present I pray þe.

315–20

Rex II

… Als þe gleme in þe glasse gladly þou glade. And sythyn þow shall sitte to be demand, To helle or to heuen for to haue vs, Insens to þi seruis is semand … 328–31

Rex III

… But whan thy dedys ar done to dye is þi dette. And sen thy body beryed shal be, This mirre will I giffe to þi grauyng. The gifte is not grete of degree, Ressayue it, and se to oure sauyng. 340–4

The Sequence at Mass on the Octave of Epiphany again underscores the significance of divine manifestation, gift-giving, and illumination. 57 Epiphany is also a memorial of a real journey with wide-reaching symbolic connotations. That is reflected in the processional nature of some dimensions of its liturgical celebration. The journey of the Magi establishes the binary division of the nations of the world into Jews and Gentiles. In the Nativity narrative, the shepherds, as good Jews, welcome the Messiah as one of them into their midst, whereas Epiphany shows the wider acceptance of the Nativity amongst receptive Gentiles as represented by the Magi. Herod, representing the old Jewish order, remains unenlightened. The journey of the Magi also acts as a focus for the theme of exile and return. This has fundamental potency for Christianity because of the iconic status of anticipatory narratives such as, for example, the Creation and Fall, and the Exodus. Both of these parallel physical with spiritual journeys away from and back to God. In the Breviary, the offices for the Vigil of Epiphany focus on this wider theme. From the first reading at Matins there is joyful anticipation of the message of Herod’s death and the return of the Holy Family to Judea after their period of exile in Egypt to avoid Herod’s massacre. In the pageant sequence in the York Register, the overarching theme of exile and return extends beyond the Masons’ and Goldsmiths’ elaborate processional pageant. But in the Marshals’ contrastingly static and modest pageant of The Flight into Egypt (XVIII), the theme is divorced from any realisation of the journey motif in processional terms. Again we find ourselves in the territory of shifting relationships between historical narrative, its symbolic significations, and their ceremonial and theatrical realisation. The symbolic burden of the journey of the Magi seems to have found expression through 57

York Missal, vol. 1, 34–5.

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procession, one of the liturgy’s available ceremonial modes, which in turn leads to a pageant in the York Cycle which enacts journeying. The episode of the Purification, though only marginally concerned with travel, nonetheless provided the liturgical occasion for a procession, Candlemas, and we shall see to what extent that may have influenced the episode’s realisation in the cycle. There are no liturgical nor civic processions associated with marking the Flight into Egypt, so, although its subject is a journey, there is no mimetic journey in the pageant, simply a departure. This pageant is one of two which occur between Herod and the Magi and the Slaughter of the Innocents (Girdlers and Nailers, XIX), as the organisers of the cycle struggle to achieve a compromise between narrative historical sequence and established calendrical timescales. 58 The Marshals’ pageant is superficially strange in that it resists representing the journey itself and finishes as the Holy Family sets out. The bulk of the action is given over to Joseph’s practical preparations, and Mary’s lament that Herod should want to kill her child: What ayles þei at my barne Slike harmes hym for to hete? Allas, why schulde I tharne My sone his liffe so swete? His harte aught to be ful sare, On slike a foode hym to forfare Þat nevir did ill, Hym for to spill, And he ne wate why. I ware full wille of wane My sone and he shulde dye, And I haue but hym allone.

XVIII: 135–46

But thematically the pageant resonates with broader liturgical emphases integral to the meaning of Epiphany. Joseph’s role as the protector of the Holy Family during the persecution which leads to exile and the resolution brought about by Herod’s death is underscored in, for example, the third Lesson for Matins on the Vigil of Epiphany. Here, with customary prolepsis, the office anticipates the return from Egypt and in celebrating the role of Joseph affirms the divinity of Christ: For they are dead that sought the soul of the boy. And in this place we understand not only Herod but also the priests and scribes, who had at that time plotted the killing of the Lord. Who, rising up took the boy and his mother etc. It does not 58

The Feast of the Holy Innocents of course precedes Epiphany in the calendar. Augustine gives careful consideration to the likely time it took the Magi to reach Judea and the then disputed temporal relationship between Christ’s birth, his Baptism, and his manifestation to the Gentiles in Sermo 202, cap. 2 (PL 38, cols 1033–5).

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say ‘he took his son and his wife’, but ‘the boy and his mother’: like a guardian not a husband. 59

Mary’s passive role in the pageant allows her to give voice to speeches which anticipate the planctus at the base of the Cross, and are similar to those spoken by the mothers over their dead children in the following Slaughter of the Innocents (Girdlers and Nailers, XIX). The latter pageant is characterised by its evenly elegiac tone, a product of the playwright’s resistance to using the confrontation between the mothers and Herod’s soldiers as an opportunity for burlesque action. The two events are united in the readings at the first Nocturn on the Octave of the Holy Innocents. The first readings tell of the massacre, followed in due course by the fifth and sixth: And that the Lord fled into Egypt on account of Herod’s persecution signifies that the elect must often be driven from their dwelling-places or even be condemned to exile by the evil of the wicked. And at the same time an example is given to the faithful not to fear to avoid the rage of their persecutors by fleeing, when they remember that their God and Lord did this. Indeed it was he who would tell his followers, ‘When you are persecuted in this city, flee to another’. He first did what he instructed, fleeing a man as a man on earth, he, whom the star from heaven had shortly before shown to the Magi. That indeed, when Herod was dead, he returned again to the land of Israel on the instruction of an angel signifies that the same elect will return to their own dwelling-places, when the power of the heretics has been restrained. 60

The other pageant which intervenes between Herod and the Magi and the Slaughter of the Innocents is the Purification of the Virgin (XVII). It has been singled out for special attention here despite the fact that, as a piece of dramatic writing, it is both unpromising, and 59

60

York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 157: Defuncti sunt enim qui querebant animam pueri. Et hoc loco intelligimus non solum herodem sed et sacerdotes et scribas eo tempore necem domini meditatos. Qui surgens accepit puerum et matrem ejus et cetera. Non dixit: accepit filium suum et uxorem suam: sed puerum et matrem ejus quasi nutricius non maritus. York Breviary, vol. 1, cols 154–5: Et quod dominus propter persecutionem herodis in egyptum fugit: significant electos sepius malorum improbitate suis effugandos sedibus vel etiam exilio damnandos. Ubi simul exemplum datur fidelibus ne dubitent rabiem persequentium declinare fugiendo: cum hoc deum ac dominum suum fecisse meminerunt. Siquidem ipse qui erat suis precepturus: cum vos persecuti fuerint in civitate ista: fugite in aliam. Prius fecit quod precepit fugiendo hominem quasi homo in terra: quem magis paulo ante monstravit stella de celo. Quod vero defuncto herode iterum angelo monente ad terram israel reversus est: significat eosdem electos post comprehensam hereticorum facultatem ad proprias sedes esse reversuros.

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problematic, a late addition to the Register, inserted out of sequence some time after 1567. The subject appears in York’s 1415 Ordo paginarum, performed not by a guild but by the religious Hospital of St Leonard’s, and then passed to the Masons, with the Hatmakers and Labourers, in 1477 to ensure its regular performance. Its troubled prehistory emerges eloquently from the records. The Ordo paginarum description of the episode includes a midwife and two sons of Simeon, who do not appear in the version in the Register at all. Indeed the evidence is that there was no pageant in regular performance when the Register was first compiled in the 1460s, so, in the pageant that does survive, we are probably dealing with a late or highly modified text. Richard Beadle summed up his sense of the pageant’s incoherence: ‘the play may have been patched together from different sources, but it is to be feared that mere ineptitude is the likelier explanation’. 61 Of course its acknowledged awkwardness may be attributed to its post-Reformation date, but there is little evidence elsewhere in, for example the postReformation texts of the Chester or Coventry cycles, of any fundamental discomfort with traditional material. The pageant is interesting because it offers another opportunity to see how, in the given context of Corpus Christi, a dramatist manages an episode which invokes another festive occasion, in this case the Greater Double, Candlemas, which completes the Christmas season and its attendant winter festivities. There is here also the added complication that the episode also suggests another familiar ritual, that of the Churching of Women after childbirth. Mary obeys the rules of the rite of Purification set out in Leviticus 12: 1–8. In Luke’s Gospel (2: 22–4) the Purification is combined with the ceremony of ransoming Jesus as a first-born male (see Exodus 13: 11–13; 22: 29; Numbers 18: 15–16; Deuteronomy 15: 19). 62 The complex heritage of the feast whose full title is ‘The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Presentation of Christ in the Temple’ presented the playwright with a number of potential difficulties to negotiate, generated by the layers of associated rituals which had accreted to the historical event. There were, however, also opportunities to create distinctive theatrical spectacle of which he failed to avail himself. Celebrated on 2 February, Candlemas is believed to have been instituted in 541 or 542 by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. 63 It reputedly replaced the great feast of expiation and purification (Februa) that was held in ancient Rome in mid-February. The date of the pagan York Plays, ed. Beadle, 149–60, with notes on the history of the manuscript as it relates to this play 434–7. 62 http://satucket.com/lectionary/Purification.htm. 63 New Catholic Encyclopaedia, sv ‘Candlemas’; also on-line at http://www. org.newadvent/cathen/03245b.htm; Microsoft ® Encarta ® Online Encyclopedia 2000 at http://encarta.msn.com (Microsoft Corporation © 1997–2000). 61

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feast was then transferred to 2 February, the 40th day after Christmas, to accord with the Jewish law which stipulates that every mother of a male child should go to the Temple to be purified forty days after his birth. Liturgically Candlemas is a watershed, as it marks a change in ‘season’, when many of the hymns and memorials of the Virgin after Lauds and Mass change over. 64 For the laity, it was a winter festival of light, involving processions with numerous candles. 65 Each parishioner was obliged, as part of their parish duties, to carry a blessed candle and to offer it, with one penny, to an appropriate altar in the church, generally dedicated to the Virgin, as a devotional and penitential act. The ceremony of blessing the candles, and the procession, took place immediately before Mass. Other candles used by the church were blessed at the same time, including the Paschal candle. The laity took home candles, now endowed with apotropaic powers, for use in times of fear and distress. Clearly the setting aside of the feast soon after the Reformation is presaged by the late-medieval clergy’s already troubled reaction to its excessively superstitious treatment. The author of Dives and Pauper eloquently expresses the dangers of encouraging Christian practices akin to what might be called ‘white witchcraft’ because of the ease with which such practices can be subverted as malign devotions to the Devil: [PAUPER] ... þey þat vsyn holy wordys of þe gospel, Pater noster, Aue, or crede, or ony oþere holy preyerys in here wychecraftis for charmys and coniuresonys, and alle þat vsyn holy water of þe font, holy crisme, messys syngynge, fastynge, continence, wylleward-goynge [wearing wool next to the skin] & swyche oþere in here wychecraftys þey makyn a wol heye sacrifyce to þe fend. It hat oftyn ben knowyn þat wychis with seyng of her Pater noster and droppyng of þe holy candel in a mannys steppys þat þey hatedyn han don hese feet roddyd of [rotted off]. DIUES. What schuld þe Pater noster and þe holy candel don þerto? PAUPER Ry3t no3t. But for þat þe wyche worchepith þe fend so heyly with þat holy preyere and with þe holy candele and vsyth swyche holy þyng in his seruyce in despyt of God, þerfor is þe fend redy to don þe wychys wille and to fulfellyn þyng þat þey don it for. And so it stant only in þe deuyl and mysbeleue of þe wyche, nou3t in þe Pater noster ne in þe holy candele, and þow3 þe folys wenyn oþerwyse. 66

Candlemas was officially abolished in 1548, beginning in London, where the candles of Candlemas were forbidden in the same year as ashes at Ash Wednesday, palms on Palm Sunday, and the celebration of Corpus Christi itself, but there is evidence that in the 1560s and 1570s 64 65 66

Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, 289. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 15–22. Dives and Pauper, 1: 1, ed. P. H. Barnum, EETS 275 (1976), 162–3.

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customs surrounding this popular feast day persisted. 67 The persistence of the feast in the popular imagination may also have something to do with its placing in the natural cycle of seasons, for just as Corpus Christi coincides with midsummer, Candlemas is the feast of deepest winter, and folk rhymes still survive attesting to its seasonal significance, for example: ‘If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, winter will have another flight, / But if it be dark with clouds and rain, winter is gone, and will not come again’ and ‘Half your wood and half your hay, / You should have on Candlemas Day’. 68 The liturgical texts which characterise the ceremony, and which are repeated in its liturgy, are the introit and gradual from Psalm 47: 10 (AV 48: 9), Suscepimus Deus, misericordiam tuam in medio templi tui (‘We have received thy mercy, Oh Lord, in the midst of your temple’), and, above all, the antiphon Lumen ad revelationem gentium, et gloriam plebis tuæ Israel (‘A light to the revelation of the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel’) and the canticle, Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace (‘Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word in peace’). 69 The last two come from Luke 2: 22–39, the gospel account of the Purification, the words attributed to Simeon coming at verses 32 and 29. The Old Testament prophecy of the event is taken from Malachi 3: 1, which anticipates the manifestation of the Lord in his Temple. For the laity, Candlemas, in the middle of winter, presented hope, both through the repeated symbolism of light into darkness and through the apotropaic power attributed to the blessed wax. The liturgical prayers used at the blessing of the candles affirm both aspects: that even as these lights, kindled with visible fire, scatter the darkness of night; so our hearts, illumined by invisible fire, that is, by the brightness of the Holy Spirit, may be free from the blindness of every iniquity: that, the eyes of our minds being purified, we may be enabled to discern such things as are pleasing to you and profitable for our salvation; so that after the darkness and dangers of this world, we may be found worthy of attaining the unfailing light. 70 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 459, 589. http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/HTML/Candlemas.htm. William Hone, The Every-Day Book, 4 vols (London: Hone, 1826), vol. 1, col. 207, quotes a version of the first proverb. For the second, see http://www.circlesanctuary.org/ and http://www. legendarydartmoor.co.uk/christ_canmas.htm. The feast is also celebrated as the modern American Groundhog Day, but this occasion has no direct relevance to, or connection with the Christian feast: http://www.satucket.com/ lectionary/Purification.htm. 69 York Missal, vol. 2, 18. 70 York Missal, vol. 2, 17: ... ut sicut hæc luminaria visibili igne accensa nocturnas depellunt tenebras, ita corda nostra invisibili igne, id est Sancti Spiritus splendore, illustres ut 67 68

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There is no mention of candles in any of the scriptural passages associated with the event. An old reading for the festival contains the line (Zephaniah 1: 12), ‘I will search Jerusalem with lamps (in lucernis)’, but it is generally assumed that the imagery arises from Simeon’s song in which he describes Christ as ‘a light to the revelation of the Gentiles’. It is from the Golden Legend that the parallel between Christ and the candle is taken and adopted into Candlemas sermons, 71 where wax, wick, and flame represent respectively body, soul, and Godhead. Eamon Duffy also notes how, in the case of Candlemas in particular, ‘popular liturgical observances had come to shape perceptions of the scriptural event which they commemorated’. The association of candles with the Purification was, in short, so rooted in the popular imagination, and so appealing as spectacle, that one would expect lay piety to exploit it to the full. Much non-dramatic devotional literature does indeed follow the Golden Legend in accounts of Candlemas, discussing why the Virgin went for purification when she had no need, commenting on the affective meeting of the old Simeon and Anna with the long-awaited child, but reserving the most detailed treatment for the ritual of the candles and associated legends. Mirk’s Festial affirms: [it] ys comyn vse to all crysten men forto come to þe chyrche þys day, and bere a candyll yn processyon, as þagh þay 3edyn bodyly wyth oure lady to chyrch, and aftyr offyr wyth hyr yn worschip and high reuerens of hur. 72

The Speculum Sacerdotale similarly focuses on the Roman origin of the event, embroidering it with the legend that the Emperor Justinian dismissed a pope on the provocation of his wife which provoked God into blighting the Empire with a pestilence which was cured only by the institution of the procession of candles devoted to the Virgin. 73 Both Mirk’s Festial and the Speculum Sacerdotale repeat miracles associated with Candlemas, including the story from the Golden Legend of the woman who gave away all her decent clothes in honour of the Virgin so was unable to attend Mass. Weeping alone in her chapel, she dreamt that she attended a Candlemas ceremony in which Christ was the priest, SS Vincent and Laurence the deacons, and the procession was led by the Virgin herself. When it came to be the dreamer’s turn to relinquish her candle, she wrestled with an angel who came to take it from her and, on waking up in the commotion, found she held half a candle which she kept as a relic for ever after. Margery Kempe, of

71 72 73

omni vitiorum cæcitate careant, et purgato mentis oculo ea cernere semper possimus, quæ tibi sunt placita et nostræ saluti utilia, quatinus per hujus sæculi caliginosa discrimina ad lucem indeficientem pervenire mereamur. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 18. Mirk’s Festial, ed. Erbe, 59. Speculum Sacerdotale, ed. Edward H. Weatherly, EETS OS 200 (1936 for 1935), 26.

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course, was so overcome by her sentimental imaginings of old Simeon receiving the Christ-child, that she was unable to carry her own candle to the altar, ‘but went waueryng on ech syde as it had ben a dronkyn woman’, until she fell down weeping. 74 Outside cycle drama, there are clearly dramatisations of the Purification designed for performance at or around Candlemas in which the evocative nature of the offering of lighted candles is exploited. The paraliturgical candle-carrying procession was something from which enactment grew until it reached the sophistication of the affective drama from late-fourteenth-century Padua where a stage direction describes Symeone cum Puero garrulante (‘chatting to the baby’). 75 Nearer to York there are accounts of events in late-fourteenthcentury Beverley, where the Guild of St Mary processed with candles to the church, led by chosen guildsmen dressed to impersonate Mary, Joseph, Simeon, and two angels. 76 In vernacular drama outside the civic cycles the Digby play, written for performance at the feast of St Anne the Virgin’s mother, who is often elided with Anna Prophetessa, is a relatively exhaustive and theatrically successful version of the events, at the climax of which there is a full procession with candles, in which Simeon carries the baby. 77 The N. Town pageant includes the singing of the whole Nunc Dimittis, during which, according to a stage direction, Simeon plays with the baby. 78 That pageant has liturgical and paraliturgical elements which connect it with the Churching of Women but also firmly with Candlemas, through liturgy, procession, and the offering of candles and of money. It would be relatively easy to conclude that the more successful plays in terms of theatrical imagination are bound to exploit the Candlemas ritual, to create drama rich in processional detail, light, music, and affective imagery, rather than simply narrating the events of Luke 2. Given the character of many of the pageants in the York Cycle as lyrical, processional, and redolent with rhetorical flourishes and images which draw upon the rich store of liturgical and devotional writing of the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the firsttime reader of York’s Purification pageant might approach it anticipating that it will exploit to the full the affective and spectacular potential of the popular Candlemas feast and its liturgy. It does not. The pageant, though moderately long by York standards at 460 lines, appears to consist of a sequence of (metrically faulty) set speeches 74 75 76 77

The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. S. B. Meech, EETS OS 212 (1940), 198. Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 2, 254. Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 2, 252–3. The Late Medieval Religious Plays of Bodleian MSS Digby 133 and e Museo 160,

ed. Donald C. Baker, John L. Murphy, and Louis B. Hall Jr, EETS OS 283 (1982), 96-115, procession at 112. 78 The N-Town Play, ed. Spector, vol. 1, 185.

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which show no signs of doing much more than offering a fairly static enactment of the events in Luke’s Gospel with some didactic padding. The opening speech of the York pageant, delivered by Prisbeter (sic), expatiates on Old Testament teaching on the purification of a mother who has recently given birth, emphasising the need to make the offering of a lamb at the Temple. There follows a speech from Anna the aged prophetess who is aware of the impending visit of Christ because of her sixty-four years of holy conversation with God. Simeon’s speech follows, lamenting his great age and physical infirmity, and longing for death. Simeon cites Malachi’s prophecy, then moves on to give an English rendition of Luke 2: 32, Lumen ad revelationem gentium, et gloriam plebis tuæ Israel, the antiphon for the day: 79 And Melachiell that proffett snell Hais tolde vs of that babb so bright, That he shulde comme with vs to dwell In our temple as leme of light.

111–14

The scene then abruptly shifts to Joseph and Mary in dialogue, Joseph arguing against Mary’s need for purification but commending her desire to comply with the law ‘for a sample of mekenesse’ (221). Compliance with the Law is again foregrounded, as both recognise the need to provide both a lamb and two doves (a compilation of the Old Testament laws taken from the Golden Legend). This allows the opportunity to arise naturally for Joseph to affirm that: He is the lame of God I say, That all our syns shall take away Of this worlde here. He is the lame of God verray That muste hus fend frome all our fray, Borne of thy wombe, all for our pay And for our chere.

263–9

Joseph’s words here echo the Canon of the Mass itself, John 1: 29, Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’, spoken during the consecration of the Host. The meeting of the Holy Family with Simeon reverts sporadically to the gospel account in Luke 2 but with one strange variation. It seems that the Purification ritual is undertaken by the Presbiter, as the ordained priest, before Simeon enters the scene at all. It is the Presbiter that Joseph and Mary urge to ‘accept’ first the sacrificial doves, then the baby itself. Then he in turn asks that God accept the offering (281–315). He and Anna then welcome the baby elaborately (316–39), and it is only at this point that Simeon is summoned by an angel. In this pageant,

79

York Missal, vol. 2, 18.

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unlike the Chester Purification, the ceremony and the encounter with Simeon are, therefore, kept separate. 80 Once Simeon has received his summons, he makes a very long speech (345–427) in which another process and a different liturgical echo seem to overlay the references to the liturgy for the specific feast of the Purification. This seems to deflect the author from any inclination to move the action towards a candlelit procession. Simeon instantly experiences many of the symptoms attributed by contemporary commentators to seeing the Host: he feels ‘light as leyf on tree, / My age is went, I feyll no fray’ (345–9), in anticipation of coming into Christ’s presence. 81 He then embarks on an elaborate set-piece speech of welcome (358–427). First he hails the baby according to the salve formula recommended for the laity at the moment of the Elevation of the Host at Mass, as son of the Virgin, son of God, protector from evil, fragrant flower, protector of great and small, rose, unfading flower, comforter. The following lines replace the repeated ‘Hail’ with ‘Come’, and move from visual to tactile images, perhaps casting Simeon in the role of an ordained priest who would handle the Host, then move on to offer repeated thanks: In peace lorde nowe leyf thy servand For myne eys haith seyn that is ordand, The helth for all men that be levand Here for ay. That helth lorde hais thowe ordand I say Here before the face of thy people, And thy light hais thowe shynyd this day To be knowe of thy folke that was febyll For evermore

415–23

The Golden Legend distinguishes three names, and three separate thematic readings of the episode, of which Candlemas is the third. 82 The first is Purification: Christ’s coming purifies all believers through faith and puts an end to fathers being held to payment and mothers’ obligation of going to the Temple after forty days. It is the second reading, however, that explains the emphasis given to the episode as presented in the York pageant, and, for that matter the 1535 Coventry Corpus Christi pageant on the same subject. 83 The second name for the 80 I am grateful to Meg Twycross for pointing out this anomaly in the York version of the account. 81 For the beneficial effects of viewing the consecrated Host, see Myrc [Mirk], Instructions for Parish Priests, ed. Peacock, 10. 82 Voragine, Golden Legend, 143–50. 83 The Coventry Weavers’ pageant of The Purification and Christ before the Doctors is tonally very different, sacrificing spiritual resonance to burlesque and consequently giving over a disproportionate amount of its action to problems of dove-hunting.

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feast is Hypopanti (Hypapante), meaning ‘the meeting (or occursus in Latin) of the Lord and His mother with Simeon and Anna’. 84 The Candlemas liturgy at its climax, when Simeon receives the baby, follows a clear pattern of acceptance, embracing, and departing in peace, a pattern emphasised by the responses from the choir: Then his parents led in the boy Christ, Simeon took him in his arms and blessed God, and said, ‘Lord now let your servant depart in peace’. V. Simeon, taking the boy in his hands, gave thanks, and cried out saying, ‘Now let’ etc. V. (sacerdotalis) Simeon, taking the boy in his hands …85

In particular, Simeon’s embracing of the child takes on emblematic force in the antiphon: Prepare your chamber, Sion, and receive Christ the king; to cherish Mary, who is the gateway of heaven, for she bore the king of glory; the Virgin remains a new light taking the son in her hands before Lucifer, he whom Simeon, as he took him in his arms, predicted to be the Lord God of the people, of life and of death, and the saviour of the world. 86

Simeon’s embrace of the infant is central to this reading of the episode’s significance. According to the Golden Legend, the Godhead submits to being led by others, to being purified though already perfect, and, as upholder of all the world, to being held up by an old man. Simeon calls him by three names in the Nunc Dimittis canticle: salvation, light, and glory, which together are glossed according to the regenerative signification of the meeting and embrace. Nicholas Love’s account of the Purification offers the most eloquent gloss on the episode as hypapante, concentrating on the affective and transformational properties of the meeting between Simeon and the Christ-child, humanity and divinity. 87 The actions upon which Love 84

New Catholic Encyclopaedia, sv Candlemas; also online at www.newadvent.org/

cathen/03245b.htm.

85

86

87

York Manual and Processional, 194–5:

Cum inducerent puerum Christum parentes ejus, accepit cum Symeon in ulnas suas, et benedixit Deum, et dixit: Nunc dimittis, Domine, servum tuum in pace. V. Accipiens Symeon puerum in manibus, gratias agens, exclamavit dicens: Nunc dimittis. V. (sacerdotalis) Accipiens Simeon puerum in manibus ... York Manual and Processional, 194: Adorna thalamum tuum, Sion, et suscipe regem Christum; amplectere Mariam, que est cælestis porta, ipsa enim portat regem gloriæ; novo lumine subsistit virgo adducens in manibus filium ante luciferum, quem accipiens Symeon in ulnas suas prædicavit populis Dominum Deum esse vitæ et mortis, et salvatorem mundi. Love, Mirror, ed. Sargent, 47–50.

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asks his reader to meditate are first the bringing of the child into the holy city of Jerusalem, the leading of Simeon by the Holy Ghost to the Temple, the site preordained for the meeting. Then the account moves into close focus: he kneled done & deuoutly honourede & wirchiped him as he was in his modere armes born, & þe child blessed him & lokyng vpon his modere, bowede towarde him in token þat he wold go to him, and so þe moder vndirstondyng þe childes wille, & þereof wonduryng’. toke him to symeon, & he with gret ioy & reuerence clippyng him in hees armes’. rose vp, blessyng god & seying with glad spirite: Lord I þonk þe, for

nowe þou letest þi seruant aftur þi word in pece. Forwhi I haue seene with myn eyen þi blessed son oure sauyoure &c. 88

There follows an account of how they all then processed to the altar and Mary there presented her son to God, and how we all now process with candles in imitation. The whole account focuses affectively on the idea of holy meeting, of the transformational embrace which brings peace to Simeon. Moreover, this particular signification is further developed by Love when in his account the Holy Family returns to Nazareth by way of the house of Elizabeth, constructing an extra-scriptural meeting and embrace between the infant Jesus and the Baptist. The account of the embrace of the two children recalls both the earlier visitation of Mary to Elizabeth and anticipates the Baptism where Christ will again humble himself as an example and in fulfilment of the words of the Magnificat. Encounter and recognition is a commonplace organisational structure in liturgical ceremony. The burden of meaning of Epiphany is conveyed by self-conscious patterns of convergence, greeting, and divergence, of seeking and fulfilment, which might equally be glossed in the words of the Nunc Dimittis. This underlying pattern is central to the meaning of Corpus Christi, which celebrates the arrival of the Real Presence of Christ at the moment of the Elevation of the Host at Mass. Through the course of Simeon’s long speech, something akin to the individual’s welcoming of the Host takes place, but here Christ is embraced rather than ingested, for hypapante, as encounter, mediates the assimilation of Christ’s substance in the individual, and his incorporation at the feast of Corpus Christi as a member of the civic community. The York pageant of The Purification may not be one of the cycle’s more successful and appealing in dramaturgical terms, but its omission of references to Candlemas and consequent missing out on a deal of potential for spectacle need not be dismissed as the product of dramatic ineptitude. The pageant is, and probably always was, pursuing a differently emphasised reading of the Purification, one compatible with 88

Love, Mirror, ed. Sargent, 48.

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the overarching semiotic of transformation suggested by the celebration of transubstantiation in the feast of Corpus Christi, and one for which Love’s text provides an inspirational gloss. Yet again we find in this comparatively late addition to the cycle further evidence of the cycle’s devisers working with rhetorical and paraliturgical allusions relating to the meaning of the feast it was written to celebrate, in pageants which explore the meaning of God incarnate in the midst of the community, from the audaciously simple Nativity play to the visible descent of the deus ex machina of the Last Judgement. The authors of pageants which draw upon episodes from the Gospels which are the matter of other independent festal occasions may have felt constrained or inspired to write interpretations of their material which mediated one festive event through the other. The result uses the material available in other celebrations selectively to enrich the central meaning of corpus Christi as a celebration of totus Christus and the transformational power of the Mass.

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Chapter 6

Holy Week and After After the long fast of Lent, Holy Week is the climax of the Church’s year. It begins with Palm Sunday and Christ’s entry into Jerusalem to fulfil his destiny. It contains the Last Supper from which the ritual of the Mass derives. It tells of Christ’s betrayal by Judas, and of his trials before Annas and Caiaphas, Pilate, Herod, then Pilate again. It reaches its climax as it follows the way of the Cross to Mount Calvary for the Crucifixion on Good Friday, and finishes with the Resurrection on Easter Sunday, the fulfilment of Christ’s covenant to humankind and the ultimate affirmation of his divinity. The season is the subject of the great Passion Plays of medieval continental Europe, and provides the greatest concentration of pageants in the York Cycle. In this chapter the focus will be primarily on those pageants which take up the narrative of the events of Holy Week that are themselves the subject of particular festive liturgical and paraliturgical treatment on Palm Sunday and over the Easter weekend. The aim is to explore how the respective treatments of the York pageants of The Entry into Jerusalem (Skinners, XXV), The Road to Calvary (Shearmen, XXXIV), The Crucifixion (Pinners, XXXV), The Death of Christ (Butchers, XXXVI), and The Resurrection (Carpenters, XXXVIII), owe debts to the elaborate celebrations of those events in the annual cycle of worship. Kept for later is discussion of the Bakers’ Last Supper (XXVII), as the narrative of the institution of the Sacrament of the Altar is clearly a particular case for a dramatic project designed to celebrate Corpus Christi. A sacrament is not a seasonal ceremony but recurs throughout the year, and how the authors of the pageants in the Register dealt decorously with historical episodes like the Last Supper which also concern the institution of one of the sacraments of the Church will be the subject of the next chapter. So too, the elaborate Trial pageants, often considered to contain the most dramatically sophisticated material in the cycle, owe debts to sources which lie outside the material of worship and will be discussed in the final chapter. As a postscript to this chapter, however, there is a brief consideration of a handful of other pageants: Christ’s Appearance to Mary Magdalene (Winedrawers, XXXIX), The Supper at Emmaus (Woolpackers and Woolbrokers, XL), The Incredulity of Thomas (Scriveners, XLI), The Ascension (Tailors, XLII), and Pentecost (Potters, XLIII), all of which involve the corporeal Christ

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after the Resurrection and are, consequently, relevant to the celebration of Corpus Christi. Special events taking place on Palm Sunday are recorded as early as the fourth century. It is the oldest and most elaborate processional ritual of the Western Church. In modern Spain, where Semana Santa celebrations, notably but not only in Seville, remain a major collaborative project between civic and ecclesiastical authorities, the day is still characterised by processions of citizens bearing palms encountering, at certain set points on a long-established route, effigies of Christ on an ass. No palm trees grew in medieval England, but the festival was, nonetheless, marked by intricate processional arrangements and was second only to Corpus Christi itself in elaboration. What all Palm Sunday processions have in common is lay involvement. The carrying of a palm frond, twig, or other symbolic piece of foliage in the procession is an action which identifies the individual believer as a follower, a disciple of Christ. 1 What customarily happened in and around York’s churches on Palm Sunday is difficult to piece together from available sources. First amongst these must be the Use of York itself. The ritual described in the Processional for the day gives a number of clues about the distinctiveness of the occasion and its likely influence on the pageant, although it ultimately fails to make the details of the rituals it describes altogether clear. 2 What is does tell us is as follows. After the sprinkling of holy water, while the palms are distributed, the following antiphons are sung: Antiphon. The boys of the Hebrews, carrying olive branches, met the Lord crying out and saying, ‘Hosanna in the highest’. Antiphon. The boys of the Hebrews strewed garments in the road and cried out, saying, ‘Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’. Antiphon. Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel. Hosanna in the highest. These are followed by the priest’s verse, ‘Out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings thou hast perfected praise’ (Psalm 8: 2, Matthew 21: 16). The stress here is on the idea that Christ was met by children, the priest’s verse echoing the introit to the Mass of Holy Innocents and the words of Christ himself, emphasising the message that his true Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 23–8. Duffy (23) points out that in England ‘palms’ were generally yew, box, or willow; the York Missal refers to them as hos palmarum ceterarumque arborum ramos ‘these branches of palms and other trees’, and hos palmarum atque florum ramos ‘these branches of palms and flowers’: York Missal, vol. 1, 85. 2 The original Latin for this protracted ceremony is too long to be quoted here but may be found in the York Manual and Processional, 148–51. 1

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followers are to emulate a child-like state. This appears to be a liturgical invention, as the Gospel accounts of the Entry do not identify those who came to meet Christ as children. It may derive by association from the children crying in the Temple (Matthew 21: 15), and the established practice of using choirboys to welcome Christ at this particular moment in the ritual. At the very opening of the ceremony, then, all participants are given their ‘palms’. Then the procession moves off, with further sung antiphons. The antiphons form a composite narrative sequence pieced together from Matthew 21: 1–9, but with additional elements drawn from John (12: 1, 9–11, 17) and Luke. They look backwards to the Raising of Lazarus, an event which occurred in the gospel account as Jesus made his way to Jerusalem, but before the formal entry on the ass commemorated on this day. They emphasise the Passover, the feast under the Old Law which, under the New Law, the celebration of Holy Week will supersede, and connect it with the miracle which definitively proved Christ’s divinity. The procession is, effectively, a quasi-drama:

Antiphon.

Six days before the feast of Passover, when the Lord came into the city of Jerusalem, boys met him, and in their hands they carried palm branches, and they cried out in a loud voice, saying, ‘Hosanna in the highest, blessed is he who comes in an immensity of mercy. Hosanna in the highest’. Antiphon. And on the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus, saying, ‘Where do you wish us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Go into the city to a certain man, and say to him, “The Master says, ‘My time is near; at your house shall I hold the Passover with my disciples’”’. And the disciples did as the Lord had commanded them and prepared the Passover. Antiphon. The Lord Jesus, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus had died, whom Jesus raised. Verse. And many of the Jews gathered there, to see Lazarus. Whom Jesus raised ... Response. And the chief priests planned to kill Lazarus also, on account of whom many came and believed in Jesus. Verse. For the crowd who were with him when he called Lazarus forth from the tomb and raised him from the dead bore witness. On account of whom many ... Response. When the crowd heard that Jesus had come to Jerusalem, they processed out [processerunt] to meet him with palm branches, and when he had approached the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd, rejoicing and praising God with a loud voice <processed out to meet him> with palm branches.

There follows the Gospel, Matthew 21: 1–9, the account of the acquisition of the ass and the beginning of the journey into Jerusalem.

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After the reading, the deacon takes the book to the executor of the office (apparently the same as the hebdomadarius, the priest who performs divine service for the week) to kiss. Simultaneously the Body of the Lord, represented by the Host in its monstrance, is carried through the eastern part of the church by another priest, under a pallium carried by two deacons and two acolytes, preceded by two clerks with torches. Then the priest says the blessing, genuflecting three times, copied by the choir. Then the priest retraces his steps and returns with the Body into the church (or into the choir, as it is not clear that he has left the actual building). Next the procession moves off around the church, singing: When the Lord was approaching Jerusalem, he sent two of his disciples out saying: ‘Go into the village 3 which is opposite you, and you will find the colt of an ass, on whom no man has sat, tied up: untie it and bring it to me. If anyone questions you, say “The Lord needs it”‘. Untying it, they brought it to Jesus, and laid their garments on it, and he sat on it. And some strewed their garments in the road, others pulled down branches from trees, and those who followed him cried out, ‘Hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the realm of our father David. Hosanna in the highest. Have mercy upon us, Son of David’.

This second element of processing tells the story again, this time definitely going outside the church, halts in front of the west door and sings the response: The priests and Pharisees gathered the council and said, ‘What shall we do, for this man performs many signs? If we leave him like this, all will believe in him, and then perchance the Romans will come and take from us our place and people’.

The rubric makes clear that this is the point at which the liturgical procession encounters the laity, as three priests now with their faces ‘turned towards the people’ in front of the door of the church are to sing this verse: But one of them, Caiaphas by name, since he was the high priest that year, prophesied, saying, ‘It is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole race should not perish.’ Therefore from that day they planned to kill him, saying, ‘If we leave ...’

The procession halts outside the west door and introduces the crowd to the fact that these events mark the beginning of the story which will end on Calvary. When the response after the verse is finished, the hymn by Theodulfus of Orléans 4 is sung above the door of the church: 3 4

Latin castellum: ‘a citadel, fort, fortified village’. See Connelly, Hymns of the Roman Liturgy, 84–7.

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Glory, laud, and honour to you, King, Christ, Redeemer, To whom boyish grace uttered a due ‘Hosanna’. The choir, genuflecting, is to repeat Glory, laud ... Boys. You are the king of Israel, and David’s noble son, Who come in the Lord’s name, blessed King. Choir. Glory, laud ... Verse. The whole heavenly company 5 is praising you on high, And mortal man and all created things likewise. Choir. Glory, laud ... Verse. The Hebrew people came to meet you with palms: With prayers, vows, and hymns, behold, we come before you. Choir. Glory, laud ... Then, when Glory, laud … has been begun by a boy, the choir is to finish, standing.

The preparation for the simulation of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem is, therefore, accompanied by the voices both of the children strewing branches on the road and those representing the company of heaven above them. How singers were to be placed above the door must have varied from place to place. Then the presumably combined procession enters the church, and the executor of the office begins the response: As the Lord <was> entering the holy city, the boys of the Hebrews, proclaiming the resurrection of life, with palm branches, cried out Hosanna in the highest.

The whole choir then sings the versicle: When the people heard that Jesus had come to Jerusalem, they went out to meet him. With palm branches ...

After the response, a carpet is laid out for the executor of the office, and the veil which has been over the largest cross throughout Lent is removed. Then the executor of the office sings another antiphon, genuflecting three times: Hail, our King, Son of David, Redeemer of the world, whom the prophets foretold would come as a Saviour of the house of Israel. For the Father sent you into the world as a life-giving victim, whom all the saints expected since the beginning of the world, and now: Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

He is copied by the choir, and the process is then repeated three times more. Three or four priests in the pulpit then begin the response: Lying men surrounded me, without cause they struck me with scourges. But you, Lord, defender, liberate/avenge me. Verse. Because tribulation is near, and there is no-one to help me. But you, Lord ... 5

This should be coetus not laetus, as printed in the York Manual and

Processional, 150.

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As this response is begun again, the procession moves off into the choir repeating the verse: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the realm of our father David. Hosanna in the highest followed by the collect: Omnipotent eternal God, who caused our Saviour to take flesh and undergo the cross, as an example of humility for humankind to imitate, kindly grant that we might be worthy to have both the lesson of his endurance and a fellowship in his resurrection. Through the same ...

The climax of the procession is clearly the simulation of Christ’s entry into the city, now represented by the church building, and a symbolic progress east towards the cross. Despite the apparent plethora of detail, it remains difficult from the rubrication in the Use of York alone to work out precisely what happened. It is unclear when the Body of Christ leaves the church, and how the procession carrying it intersects with the parochial procession. It is equally unclear where the second procession starts from. The Sarum rite is clearer in some respects, though different in detail, focusing on four stopping places, or stations, and involving the procession passing under the Host as it returns into the church. Using this version, and drawing chiefly on East Anglian sources, Eamon Duffy constructs a picture of what happened at the climax of the ceremony for the laity. The clerical procession carrying the Body of Christ out of the church would meet the procession of parishioners at a churchyard Palm Cross. Members of the choir would be singing the anthem ‘Behold O Sion’ and might be costumed in wigs, beards, and robes as Old Testament prophets, a further quasi-dramatic embellishment of the occasion. He notes also that it was distinctively English not to represent the Body of Christ by a life-sized effigy on wheels, as is the case in modern Spain, nor even by a wooden cross or Gospel book, as was the case elsewhere in medieval Europe, but by the Sacrament in a monstrance: The use of the Sacrament in English Palm Sunday ceremonies was at once more and less dramatic than the representational realism evident in the Palmesel, which looked like Jesus and directly represented the ride into Jerusalem. The Blessed Sacrament did not look like Jesus, but, far more vividly, was Jesus, body, blood, soul, divinity, taking part in the communal re-enactment of his entry into the city not by a wooden proxy, but with all the overwhelming reality which late medieval believers attributed to the host. 6

6

Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 26.

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In the rite Duffy describes, clerical and parochial processions merge as invocations to the Host are sung. The procession moves round the east of the church to the south, where boys on a scaffold sing the Gloria, laus …, the hymn by Theodulfus, and unconsecrated Mass wafers and flowers are strewn in front of the Host and scrambled for by children. 7 The scaffold, which in the Use of Sarum was the second station on the south side, may have been the alternative to having boys in the gallery as described in the York Processional. The Host then processed round to the west door, where the ceremony was sometimes embellished by a priest striking the door with the foot of his processional cross to demand entry for Christ, a conflation with the Harrowing of Hell ritual adapted for consecration ceremonies. 8 Clergy and people then passed into the church under the monstrance and moved to the rood screen where the unveiling of the cross, described above, takes place. Duffy also notes that it was widely held that crosses made during the Gospel reading had apotropaic powers, and people carried sticks and string to church for the purpose of making them. The York Processional, supplemented by Duffy’s witnesses of extraliturgical ritual, further demonstrates just how intricate medieval English Palm Sunday processional activity could be. Such is the clear and established tradition of dramatic embellishment of the rite that rubricators miss out details which would be useful to the uninitiated modern reader. They can also be observed anticipating the potential complications involved in the complex arrangements, providing alternatives to deal with large and small churches and those lacking doors at appropriate points of the compass, and even making provision for inclement weather. 9 Perhaps the best access we can have to the experience of taking part in one of these rituals is Margery Kempe’s account, although she, unlike the majority of parishioners, had actually been to the Holy Land and walked the Via Crucis, so was, presumably, particularly well informed about what the ceremony represented. She also associates the entry into the church with the Harrowing of Hell rather than the Entry into Jerusalem, a connection or ritual elision embedded in the Sarum rite: Many 3erys on Palme Sonday, as þis creatur was at þe processyon wyth oþer good pepyl in þe chirch-3erd & beheld how þe preystys dedyn her obseruawnce, how þei knelyd to þe Sacrament & þe pepil also, it semyd to hir gostly sygth as þei sche had ben þat tyme in Ierusalem & seen owr Lord in hys manhod receyuyd of þe pepil as he was whil he went her 7 See The N-Town Play, ed. Spector, vol. 1, 259–64, where the strewing of flowers is imported from the liturgical ceremony. 8 Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 1, 149–52. 9 York Missal, vol. 1, 89: Quando vero propter intemperiem aeris processio fiet

infra ecclesiam …

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in erth … And þan on þe same Sonday, whan þe preyste toke þe crosse-staf & smet on þe chirche-dor & þe dor openyd a-geyn hym, & þan þe preyst entryd wyth þe Sacrament & al þe pepil folwyng in-to chirche, þan thowt sche þat owr Lord spak to þe Deuyl & openyd Helle-3atys confowndyng hym & alle hys oste & what grace & goodnes he schewyd to þo sowlys, delyueryng hem fro euyr-lestyng preson mawgre þe Deuyl & alle hys ... Whan þei wer comyn in-to þe cherch & sche beheld þe preystys knelyng be-forn þe Crucifixe, and, as þei songyn, þe preyste whech executyd þe seruyse þat day drow up a cloth be-for þe Crucyfixe thre tymys, euery tyme heyar þan oþer, þat þe pepil xulde se þe Crucifixe … 10

It seems inconceivable that the staging of the Skinners’ pageant in the Register was not also coloured by some knowledge of these rituals which was shared by the author, performers, and audience alike, according to their different experiences. The fact that the pageant is completely devoid of stage directions concerning movement on the set, however, makes relating it to an already confusing ritual challenging, and may account for why the possibilities it offers have largely been overlooked in modern reconstructions. The pageant has a large cast, including those involved in the three embedded miracle narratives, and the action is characterised by meetings and encounters. There are a number of occasions also when dialogue turns into formal turn-taking sequences, such as those of the eight Burgesses who welcome Christ to the city. The danger, as modern reconstructions have testified, is that the audience is presented with a busy cluster of animated persons coming and going from the deck of a wagon. It is indeed clearly nonsensical to conceive, in the case of this pageant in particular, that the wagon is synonymous with the ‘stage’ on which all action takes place; action in this pageant is likely to have taken place largely at street level. The only clue in the dialogue is that Jesus says (462) that he will ascend to Jerusalem, at which point he hands the ass to Peter who then returns it to the Janitor. This seems to indicate that the wagon represented Jerusalem. 11 It would also make sense if this representation were to be a tiered or ordered structure with considerable vertical height, possibly like a city gate. This would offer the opportunity at the end of the pageant, when all the processing comes to rest, for the eight Burgesses to be ranked formally to welcome 10 11

The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Meech, 184–5.

In the Early Banns of the Chester Cycle the connection is made explicit: Also the Corvesers with all their might, The fynde a full fayre sight, ‘Jerusalem’ their caryage hyght … R.M. Lumiansky and David Mills, The Chester Mystery Cycle: Essays and Documents (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 281, lines 92–3; see also 291, lines 127–9.

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Jesus. Such an arrangement would also allow for singing children to occupy niches at a higher level, just as the liturgical rubrics relating to the Host’s re-entry into the church suggest. Music in the liturgical ritual associated with Palm Sunday is very important, and must have formed a prominent part in the spectacle of the pageant. As the first Burgess determines that they will go to meet Jesus, he says: Go we þan with processioun To mete þat comely as vs awe, With braunches, floures and vnysoune. With myghtfull songes her on a rawe Our childir schall Go singe before, þat men may knawe.

260–5

And the pageant ends with one of those infuriatingly sparse stage directions, Tunc cantant, which may refer to the Burgesses only, but could include other singers. Children singing hosannas to welcome Christ are, as we have seen, a common feature of ritual celebrations of Palm Sunday, based on a choral tradition, enacting the versicle which in the Missal immediately follows the distribution of palms, ‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings you have perfected your praise, on account of your enemies’. 12 The demands of this apparently settled element in the ritual seem even to have influenced elements in the architectural design of churches, particularly in the cathedrals of England’s south west, where it was common for the whole west front to be peopled with concealed singers. 13 If the pageant wagon were to carry a vertical scenic arrangement, incorporating gates or an entrance archway, it would also mirror the type of structure popular in Royal Entries. The action of the pageant however, demands yet another structure, from which Peter and Philip take the ass. In the pageant this is described by Jesus as ‘3one castell’ (15). In English Bible translations the ass is fetched from a village; the Latin of the liturgy, however, uses the word castellum, literally ‘a fortified village or fort’, which the playwright has simply transliterated as castle. In the liturgical rubric the church building initially stands in for the place where the ass was acquired and where the procession begins, then, when the Host is taken back in, comes to represent Jerusalem. It seems less likely that a single wagon-mounted set could stand without alteration for two separate locations in the pageant, 12 Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 1, 86. For Ex ore infantium, Deus, et lactentium perfecisti laudem, propter inimicos tuos see York Missal, vol. 1, 85. 13 M.D. Anderson, Drama and Imagery in English Medieval Churches

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 21, discusses the arrangement at Exeter. See also Pamela Z. Blum, ‘Liturgical Influences on the Design of the West Front at Wells and Salisbury’, Gesta 25: 1 (1986), 145–50; J. Philip McAleer, ‘Particularly English? Screen Facades of the Type of Salisbury and Wells Cathedrals’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 141 (1988), 124–58. I am grateful to Beth Williamson for these references.

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where the mode of performance is much more representational, but it is possible that the ass was fetched from a structure set below the wagon at ground level, or even – though this is possibly too fanciful – that the wagon, orientated end-on, had one structure mounted on one end, another on the other. This would involve pulling it up initially with the ‘castle’ set facing the audience, then rotating it during the processional action to reveal ‘Jerusalem’ at the front, much in the way a revolve can be used on the proscenium stage. It is also possible simply that the doorway to any likely building along the route was used to represent an improvised ‘castle’. However the castle is represented, it takes the Apostles the whole length of the citizens’ discussion before they reach Christ. Moreover the elaborate nature of the production was well established by the time the Register was compiled, as the Skinners were one of the earliest guilds to have a pageant-house, implying that they had a vehicle as early as 1387. The entry in the Ordo paginarum is also comparatively complex in detail, suggesting both movement and singing. 14 Whatever the precise scenic arrangement, clearly the pageant’s staging involves vertically elaborate thresholds and gateways, which may explain the prominent role of the character designated ‘Janitor’. As well as supplying the ass, this character performs the role of doorkeeper, messenger, and commentator on the complicated comings and goings. In the liturgy, one priest is designated ‘executor of the office’ (executor officii), and his role is particularly connected with the ceremonial by which the Body of Christ is taken out through the church door, then brought back in again. The rubrication in the York Missal for the point in the ceremony at which the Host is brought back into the church demonstrates the importance of the moment of re-entry:

Then the procession is to go inside, with the cantor [executor of the office – MS D] beginning the Response.

As the Lord was entering the holy city, the boys of the Hebrews, proclaiming the resurrection of life, with palm branches cried out, Hosanna in the highest. When the people heard that Jesus had come to Jerusalem, they went out to meet him. With palm branches ...

Edd. and MS B. – As the procession enters, the prelate, genuflecting three times before the uncovered cross, is to adore it.

The detail of the Ordo paginarum text is taken from new work on the manuscript by Meg Twycross. It reads: ¶ Ihesus super asinum cum pullo suo xij \ij/ apostoli sequentes Ihesum sex diuites & sex pauperes viij pueri cum ramispalmarum cantantes Benedictus &cetera & Zacheus [ascendens in arborem sicamorum] all of which she believes is original except the last four words about Zaccheus. 14

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[MS D. – When the response has been finished with the verse, the executor of the office, when a carpet has been laid down, is to adore the great cross, which has been laid bare by the sacrists, genuflecting and chanting Hail, our King ... ] 15

The keeping of thresholds, the exit from, and re-entry of God’s Body to the church, clearly has ritual significance. (The laying of the carpet is unexplained, but it is possible that the priest, in addition to genuflecting, was expected to prostrate himself in front of the cross.) Just as in the ritual, the set of the pageant is all entrances and exits. The Body of Christ is present in the church at the beginning then at the end of the ritual, and so too in the pageant Christ is present, then absent as the Burgesses talk about him, then he makes a grand entrance again. The pageant action is more mimetic, but the overall pattern is the same. Moreover, the Missal’s editor believed that MS D, which is fifteenthcentury, belonged to the Minster and so represents what the cycle’s audience would have been familiar with. 16 In his study of the four extant cycles, Martin Stevens suggested that the York Skinners’ pageant is an elision of the processional celebration of Corpus Christi with the festive procession for Palm Sunday. For Stevens the episode foregrounds ‘York’s obsession with civic ceremony and self-celebration’, as the Palm Sunday procession recreated in the pageant enacts and mimics the Corpus Christi procession from which the pageants emanate. 17 He also proposed that the Royal Entry was the mediating genre. What Stevens did not recognize was that the formulaic speeches of welcome which the eight Burgesses address to Christ take the form of Elevation lyrics, probably also uttered by the faithful as the Host passes them in its monstrance on the Corpus Christi procession, 18 nor the influence on the pageant of the accustomed celebration of Palm Sunday in the liturgy of York Use as witnessed annually by the pageant’s audience. Commenting on the Entry into Jerusalem panel in the east window in Fairford (Glos), where the boys shown singing above the gates of Jerusalem hold scrolls inscribed with the antiphon Gloria laus, M.D. Anderson commented, ‘church imagery emphasized the unity between events in the life of Christ and their liturgical celebration’. 19 The same principle may apply to the imaginative processes which generated and annually reproduced the York Skinners’ pageant. York Missal, vol. 1, 88. York Missal, vol. 1, x. Martin Stevens, Four Middle English Mystery Cycles: Textual, Contextual and Critical Interpretations (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 52.

15 16 17

18 See Chapter 1 above. Duffy also notes this verbal echo, 27. In the modern Corpus Christi procession in Valencia, many of the faithful still drop to their knees and mutter prayers of welcome as the Host passes. 19 Anderson, Drama and Imagery, 21.

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In fact the speeches of the eight Burgesses seem to owe equal debts to Royal Entries and to the processional liturgy of Palm Sunday in both form and content. Their initial speeches are expanded versions of the liturgical recognition of Christ by prophecy and by actions, especially the Raising of Lazarus, which provides the narrative substance of the antiphons in the Processional. These two aspects of Christ’s credentials are then demonstrated in the pageant by the embedding of the action of three miracles on the road to Jerusalem in the subsequent processional action. In the liturgy, the healing of the blind man, like the raising of Lazarus, is the subject of the Gospel reading on Quinquagesima Sunday. 20 The Burgesses’ speeches of welcome to Christ at the end of the pageant use the formula Stevens identified with formal welcoming speeches in Royal Entries and Duffy with Elevation prayers. Both analogies are clearly relevant, but the most immediate source is the greeting sung by the whole choir at the end of the Palm Sunday procession: Hail, our King, Son of David, Redeemer of the world, whom the prophets foretold would come as a Saviour of the house of Israel. For the Father sent you into the world as a life-giving victim, whom all the saints expected since the beginning of the world, and now: Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. 21

The Skinners’ pageant as it is recorded in the York Register betrays its complex heritage both in its likely scenic arrangement and in the events and speeches it dramatises. In the speech which opens the pageant, Jesus asks for an ass ‘þis feste’ (20). The use of the word may suggest an acknowledgement of the embedded festive nature of the events about to be enacted, or could simply be a reference to the Jewish Passover. The pageant combines references to the civic, particularly the Royal Entry, and the liturgical, because the Palm Sunday liturgy offers a distinctive framing of events in which the simple biblical narrative is embedded. Common to both these influences is the processional mode, which the pageant embeds within its action, mirroring in miniature the event of which it forms part. Moreover, the Breviary chapter for Lauds on Palm Sunday (Hebrews 9: 11–12) makes the sacramental nature of the entry into Jerusalem explicit: Christ, present as the high priest of future good things, through a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with 20 21

See Chapter 3 above.

York Manual and Processional, 151:

Ave rex noster, fili David, redemptor mundi, quen prophetae praedixerunt salvatorem domui Israel esse venturum; Te enim ad salutarem victimam Pater misit in mundum, quem expectabant omnes sancti ab origine mundi, et nunc Osanna filio David: Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini: Osanna in excelsis.

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hands – that is, not of this creation – by the blood neither of goats or of calves, but by his own blood, entered once into the holy place, when eternal redemption was won. 22

The Skinners’ pageant occurs as the Corpus Christi cycle approaches its climax in the elaborate and detailed sequence of pageants which re-enact Christ’s Passion in celebration of his perpetual presence on earth through the mystery of the Sacrament of the Altar. The author of the pageant seems to have exploited his mixed quasi-dramatic heritage to achieve theatrically what figural habits of reading strive to do, that is to deploy a single narrative historical moment as the signifier of perpetual possibilities and eternal verities. The elaborate and quasi-dramatic ritual of Palm Sunday is of course the forerunner of the sequence associated with the period from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. There we find not only that the liturgy has embedded dramatic elements, but that it is supplemented with tropes, including the Quem quaeritis. Unsurprisingly it also has a concomitant legacy of extra-liturgical ritual practices in which the laity participated. These arose as ritual embellishments of individual events in the Passion narrative and gave Easter a very distinctive character. Although the whole gospel story from John was narrated during the Good Friday Mass, individual moments also acquired the status of devotional images, transcending their purely narrative function. These were the images which had become the focal points for devotion in contemporary affective piety. 23 In the remainder of this chapter we will concentrate on these elements as well as on the distinctive seasonal liturgy itself to see how they affected the representation of the events of the Passion itself which are the climax of the York Cycle. In Roman Catholic meditative tradition, the immediate prelude to the Crucifixion is the carrying of the Cross to Calvary. Since the time of the Emperor Constantine, pilgrims to Jerusalem had walked the route that Christ walked, and gradually throughout the Middle Ages churches developed side chapels dedicated to celebrating events on that journey which evolved into the extra-liturgical processional ceremony known as the Stations of the Cross. Originally a Franciscan Lenten rite, the practice of following the Stations of the Cross was evolving into lay worship at the same time as the York Cycle developed. Although it would be the seventeenth century before the fourteen Stations had settled into general practice, at the end of the fifteenth century stations were already being set up at roadsides leading to churches or 22

23

York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 366, repeating 351 for Passion Sunday: Christus assistens pontifex futurorum bonorum per amplius et perfectius tabernaculum non manufactum: id est non hujus creationis: neque per sanguinem hircorum aut vitulorum: sed per proprium sanguinem introivit semel in sancta eternal redemptione inventa. On this point see further Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, vol. 2, 16.

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churchyards in emulation of the sites on the Via Crucis in Jerusalem. These were marks on church walls on what had become the fixed route where pilgrims stood – hence ‘station’ – to make their devotions. The route which William Wey of Eton College followed twice, in 1458 and 1462, was believed to be that walked by the Virgin every day in commemoration of the Passion. For Margery Kempe, walking the Via Crucis was the emotional climax of an eventful pilgrimage, and her particularly literal cast of mind led her to imagine that every woman with a male child she met along the way was the Virgin with the infant Christ. Martin Ketzel of Nuremberg’s instigation of the first recorded domestic version of the Via Crucis as a result of a pilgrimage he had made is almost exactly coterminous with the writing of the York Register. 24 The Shearmen’s pageant of The Road to Calvary, a more or less settled element in the York Cycle since 1415, 25 is probably directly inspired by accounts of pilgrimages to the Holy Land and is a parallel development with the paraliturgical ceremony of the Stations of the Cross. In the pageant Christ picks up the Cross around line 105 when the Third Soldier indicates that they should set off. He then meets St John who makes a long speech anticipating the Virgin’s planctus at the base of the Cross. A leaf is then missing, but it may be assumed that it contained John’s carrying of the news of what was happening to the Three Maries, as when the action resumes they have met Jesus who delivers to them the dramatist’s version of his admonition to the ‘Daughters of Jerusalem’. He stumbles and falls at line 225, and Simon of Cyrene comes to his help. Thereafter the soldiers tear off his garment, beat, and bind him before the pageant ends. All the pageant lacks of the earliest versions of the Stations is the encounter with Saint Veronica, although it is likely that this was also included in the missing pages, as she is listed in the Ordo paginarum. It also incorporates, however, other moments from the Passion narrative which were embellished in liturgical practice, had become the subjects of special focus in devotional imagery, and which are built on in the pageants that follow. The Pinners’ and Painters’ pageant of The Crucifixion is well known for its simplicity, dramatic control, and emotional impact. Soldiers bungle the job of nailing Christ to the Cross on the ground, raise it with difficulty, and drop it into the mortise, causing maximum pain. At the Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, vol. 2, 82; The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture, ed. Peter and Linda Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 505. For Margery Kempe’s account see The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Meech, 68–73. 25 Meg Twycross’s research on the alterations to the Ordo indicates that the entry 24

was heavily scraped out, but may all have been there already and shifted down to make room for the composite Condemnation of Christ, or it may have grown. She also notes that St Veronica was important enough to be present in the shorter Second List.

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moment when the Cross is raised the audience, who have been engaged in the interrelationship between four local workmen and enticed to conspire with them as they do a difficult job badly, are confronted with Christianity’s central icon, the image of the crucified Christ. Moreover, because this is a dramatic representation, the image then speaks, and he speaks directly to them. The pageant requires no more than an unadorned, flat-topped wagon with a central mortise into which the Cross may be dropped when it is raised. All the pageant’s dramatic impact derives from action and dialogue. This pageant can be relied upon to make an impact even on cynical modern western secular audiences. 26 For its original audience its direct impact would have been enhanced by the way in which the pageant references practices of worship they would be accustomed to encountering in church on Good Friday, worship which had a very special character indeed. The liturgy for Good Friday is primarily characterised by starkness and by absences – absence of lights and of visible images, and stripped altars. In addition, many of the standard formulae, recognisable even to those without Latin, disappeared from the Mass – opening and closing formulae, versicles, invitatory, hymns, and chapters. Indeed the Mass did not involve a consecration but used one of the three Hosts consecrated on the previous day. 27 What took the place of the customary ritual embellishments had its own special character and was made up of three components: prayers, Reproaches or Improperia, and adorations. Not only do these have a special verbal character (some elements are in Greek), but they have a unique musical setting which is reproduced in the York Processional. 28 It was also on this day that the whole of John’s account of the Passion narrative was read. It is, in particular, the Improperia and adorations from public worship on Good Friday which lend their special quality to the pageant, not because of any explicit echoes, but because it is in the liturgy, as opposed to the biblical account, that Christ’s voice commentates upon what is being done to him as it does at the most potent moment of the pageant. The actual words with which Christ reproaches the crucifying soldiers and the audience in the York pageant are taken from the less public Breviary, from the responses after the

26 The production of this pageant in the streets of York in 1992 by the Drama Department of Bretton Hall, directed by Philip Butterworth, was one outstanding example of how the pageant operates as a successful piece of dramaturgy, played completely in the round and pulling the street audience in from all directions as the four Soldiers took a corner of the completely bare wagon each for the initial action. 27 Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts, 903. See also page 173 below for the practices involved in the Maundy Thursday liturgy. 28 York Manual and Processional, 156–64.

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eighth Lesson on Good Friday, which are in turn taken from the Old Testament Book of Lamentations, 1: 12: 29 See, all peoples, if there is any sorrow like my sorrow

and fifth Lesson on Holy Saturday: O all you who pass by the way, consider and see, if there is any sorrow like my sorrow.

In the Good Friday Mass, after the prayers and the reading of the whole gospel narrative, the processional element of the service opens with the rubric:

On the day of Preparation, when the prayers after the Passion have been completed, two priests in albs from the right-hand part of the altar, carrying their stoles before them in the manner of a cross, processing with naked feet over the carpet laid from the altar into the choir, and carrying the covered Cross, with a pillow underneath it are to sing … 30 While they process, in ritual emulation of the carrying of the Cross to Calvary, they sing the antiphon which is the first of the Reproaches: My people, what have I done to you, or in what have I made you sad? Answer me: because I led you out of the land of Egypt, you have prepared a Cross for your Saviour. 31

At this point, two deacons, also with naked feet, answer them in Greek from the West door, genuflecting and singing: Holy God, holy and strong, holy and immortal, have mercy upon us. 32

This is echoed three times in Latin by the choir, also genuflecting. The two priests carrying the Cross then progress a little further towards the choir and sing the second then the third Reproaches, followed by the same pattern of responses. York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 393: … videte omnes populi. Si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus. and col. 398: O vos omnes qui transitis per viam: attendite et videte: Si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus. 30 York Manual and Processional, 156: 29

31

32

In die Parasceves expletis Orationibus post passionem, duo Presbyteri in Albis a dextera parte Altaris stolas suas coram eis in modum crucis habentes, nudis pedibus super tapeta ab Altari usque in Chorum expansa procedentes, et Crucem coopertam eum cervicali supposito bajulantes cantent … York Manual and Processional, 156 continuing: Popule meus, quid feci tibi aut in quo contristavi te? Responde mihi: quia eduxi te de terra Ægypti, parasti Crucem Salvatori tuo. York Manual and Processional, 157: Agios o Theos agios iskyros, agios athanatos, eleyson imas.

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The two priests then stand on the top step of the choir, and say the following antiphon inviting adoration of the Cross which is now uncovered: Behold the wood of the Cross, on which the Salvation of the world hung: come, let us adore. 33 The rubric that follows makes it clear that this is a signal for a number of things to happen simultaneously, and, in particular, for ‘audience participation’: While the choir speaks, the Cross is to be adored: firstly the priests carrying [it] are to adore it, genuflecting, (and) kiss it; and the same [is to be done by] the people. 34

The liturgy continues with verses and responses from the choir as an accompaniment to the Good Friday practice of ‘creeping to the Cross’. 35 This practice was the focus of Cross-veneration, and first the clergy, then the congregation, crept barefoot on their knees to kiss its base. The sung accompaniment to this distinctive processional element in the service focuses on a number of features of the Cross which were in turn echoed in vernacular verse. The particular conceit of presenting the nature of the Cross as blending with and complementing Christ is well known in literature from the late Anglo-Saxon poem, The Dream of the Rood, but it stems from the great sixth-century Latin poem by Venantius Fortunatus, written to celebrate the presentation of a relic of the True Cross to his patroness Radegund, and subsequently enshrined in the liturgy for Good Friday at the Adoration of the Cross:

Hymn.

Faithful Cross! The one noble tree among them all: no wood brings forth such a one, in leaf, in flower, in shoot. The sweet tree bears sweet nails – bears a sweet weight. 36

The Cross is also, however, an instrument of torture, one of the Instruments of the Passion:

33

York Manual and Processional, 157:

34

York Manual and Processional, 158: Dum dicat Chorus, Crux adoretur: primo Sacerdotes portantes adorent genuflectendo (et) osculentur; et sic [fiat a] populo. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 30, notes that this was an ‘ingrained practice’ in

35

Ecce lignum crucis, in quo salus mundi pependit; venite adoremus.

popular religion much criticised by reformers. York Manual and Processional, 160–1; York Missal, vol. 1, 106, a shorter version; Connelly, Hymns of the Roman Liturgy, 82–5: Crux fidelis inter omnes Arbor una nobilis, Nulla silva talem profert Fronde, flore, germine: Dulce lignum dulces claves, Dulce pondus sustinet.

36

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VII. Verse. Here are the vinegar, the gall, the reed, the spittle, the nail, the spear – his meek body is pierced, a wave of blood flows forth; and with this river the earth, the sea, the stars, the world are washed. 37

This verse is a liturgical rendering of what came to be schematised in visual art as well as in vernacular verse as the arma Christi. The arma Christi could be a simple coat of arms on which all the Instruments of the Passion are displayed, such as the little picture pasted in to the Book of Hours which survives from All Saints Pavement in York, 38 or could take the form of the more elaborate arma Christi rolls, on which each instrument is given an illustrated verse. 39 All are accessories associated with private devotional practices. Perhaps most strikingly, the Good Friday processional liturgy presents a Cross which is semi-animate, colluding in the events of the Passion: 40

VIII. Verse. Bend your branches, tall tree, relax your stretchedout innards, and let that rigour which your birth gave you soften, that you might stretch the limbs of the heavenly king on a gentle stake

and the repeated response of the choir is, ‘Faithful Cross …’. Indeed all the major affective representations of the Crucifixion and their accompanying iconography are succinctly represented in the choral liturgy which accompanies the Adoration of the Cross in this very participatory and distinctive element in annual worship. There has been space here only to touch on the plethora of examples of imaginative embellishments of all these dimensions of the Crucifixion in the visual arts, in verse, in sermon, and affective prose writing; the field is well-covered. 41 The York Crucifixion pageant, 37 This verse is adapted from Venantius’ original, apparently to refer more closely to the list of the Instruments of the Passion: Hic acetum, fel, arundo Sputa, clavis, lancea; Mite corpus perforator, Sanguis unda profluit, Terra, Pontus, astra, mundus Quo lavantur flumine. 38 York: York Minster Library MS XVI. K. 6 at fol. 44v. 39 For example, Edinburgh: National Library of Scotland, Blairs College MS Dep 221 no. 9. 40 York Manual and Processional, 161: Flecte ramos, arbor alta, Tensa laxa viscera, Et rigor lentescat ille, Quem dedit nativitas, Ut superni membra Regis Miti tendas stipite. 41 See, for example, Rosemary Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), chapters 2 and 6; James Simpson, Piers

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deceptively simple as it is, has its own way of incorporating the expected elements of the event in a way which connects with a striking act of annual worship with which audience and players alike would all have been familiar. The wagon appears to arrive at each station with the Cross flat on its deck, and before they set to work, the stage business involving the four Soldiers incorporates the displaying of the obvious Instruments of the Passion – ‘And I haue gone for gere goode speede, / Bothe hammeres and nayles large and lange’ (29–30). In the following stanza the Fourth Soldier assures the others that the Cross ‘is goodely graied / And boorede’ (39–40), but when the grisly work is under way, the Cross fails to be such a good fit:

I Miles III Miles

Þis bargayne may not blynne. It failis a foote and more, Þe senous are so gone ynne. IV Miles I hope þat marke amisse be bored.

106–9

Clearly what is happening here is an exploitation of the traditional legend which suggested that the Cross was made of the special wood which was planted in Adam’s mouth when he was on his deathbed, and which changed shape when used for other purposes, such as the building of Solomon’s Temple. 42 The idea is then that it would not fit the body of Christ, and this is translated in the pageant into an ironic representation of four York workmen doing a bad job with intractable materials. The magical semi-animate nature of the wood of the Cross has an ambivalent effect: on one hand it conspired with Christ as his faithful retainer, on the other, which seems to be favoured in the pageant, its shape-changing meant that when Christ was fixed to it on the ground, he endured additional torture as his body had to be stretched to fit. The preceding pageant, the Shearmen’s Road to Calvary (XXXIV) has, incidentally, already opened with four Soldiers discussing the preparation of the Cross and declaring it to be well made and a good fit for its victim:

I Miles

It is wele warred, so motte I spede, And it be lele in lenghe and brede Þan is þis space wele spende.

Plowman: An Introduction to the B-text (London: Longman, 1990), 204–45; J.A.W. Bennett, Poetry of the Passion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). 42 See for example ‘Hou þe Holy Cros was y-founde’ in Legends of the Rood: Symbols of the Passion and Cross-poems, ed. Richard Morris, EETS 46 (1871), 19-47 (Vernon MS): Þe Carpunter hit leyde a-doun in strong wraþþe and grete To no þing þat he hit euere dude he ne mihte hit maken i-meetete … Þe Gywes comen and founden þat treo fleotynde þer bi cas, Heo nomen hit vp and for hit was foul and i-leye hedde þer longe, And maden þer-of þe holy Roode; vr lord þer-on to honge. 155–6; 180–82

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III Miles To loke þeraftir it is no nede,

I toke þe mesure or I yode, Bothe for þe fette and hende. II Miles Beholde howe it is boorede Full euen at ilke an ende. This werke will wele accorde, It may not be amende.

76–85

The most striking element of the Crucifixion pageant, however, is the tonal shift which takes place when the Cross is raised. The process of raising is accompanied by incessant chattering amongst the Soldiers, again laced with ironic expletives such as, ‘Þe deuill hym hang!’ (188) and complaints of a dislocated shoulder (190), and sore back (194), culminating with ‘Þe werste is paste’ (212). Then, once the Cross is raised, there is further business as wedges have to be driven in with hammers so that the Cross will ‘full stabely stande’ (247). Finally the Soldiers stop work and address Christ directly, asking him how he feels, and he speaks from the Cross:

Jesus Al men þat walkis by waye or strete,

Takes tente 3e schalle no trauayle tyne. Byholdes myn heede, myn handis, and my feete, And fully feele nowe, or 3e fyne, Yf any mournyng may be meete, Or myscheue mesured vnto myne. My fadir, þat alle bales may bete, Forgiffis þes men þat dois me pyne. What þei wirke wotte þai noght; Therfore, my fadir, I craue, Latte neuere þer synnys be sought, But see þer saules to saue. 253–64

A number of things occur at this point in the action. The deixis of both dialogue and action are closely controlled, so that the audience’s view of the Soldiers is immediately modified by placing them at the base of the Cross. Then the focus of attention moves up to the face of the speaking Christ. Initially the audience is addressed directly, then the deixis changes again and the focus moves further upwards vertically as the crucified Christ addresses God the Father and asks for forgiveness for ‘þes men þat dois me pyne’, where ‘þes’ is sufficiently ambiguous that it can include the members of the audience who have just passively stood by and allowed the Crucifixion to happen. The progress of the action has its parallel in the processional element of the Good Friday Mass of the Presanctified. In the pageant, the raising of the Cross, followed by a speech of reproach to the assembled company, offers a close and moving parallel with the removal of the shrouds from the Cross during the Adorations and Reproaches in the

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Mass. 43 What would follow in the act of worship is that all present would ‘creep to the Cross’. In the pageant there is no indication that any such thing happened, as the Soldiers then take over the action again. The final action in the pageant involves them wrangling over Christ’s garment, for which, according to the Gospel account, they drew lots: III Miles I rede we drawe cutte for þis coote – Loo, se howe sone – alle sidis to saue. IV Miles The schorte cutte schall wynne, þat wele 3e woote, Whedir itt falle to knyght or knave. I Miles Felowes, 3e thar noght flyte, For þis mantell is myne. 293–8 This element, anticipated at the end of the preceding Shearmen’s pageant, also echoes the first antiphon for Good Friday Matins in the Breviary:

At matins for the first nocturn. Antiphon. The kings of the earth have stood ready and the

princes have come together as one, against the Lord and against his Christ/anointed. Psalm. Why have the Gentiles raged … Antiphon. They divided my clothes amongst themselves, and drew lots for my clothing. Psalm. O God my God look upon me … Antiphon. Evil witnesses rose up against me, and their iniquity has lied for them. Psalm. The Lord is my light … Verse. They divided my clothes amongst themselves, and drew lots for my clothing. The Our Father is to be said with prostration. 44

And, although there is no indication in the York service books, Eamon Duffy has noted that during the reading of the Passion there was sometimes a ‘small dramatic embellishment’ as ‘clerks parted two linen cloths on the bare altar’. 45 43

44

45

York Manual and Processional, 158: Deinde Presbyteri stantes super gradum altiorem, discooperta cruce, dicant Antiphonam, ‘Ecce lignum Crucis …’ York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 389: Ad matutinas in primo nocturno antiphona.

Astiterunt reges terre et principes convenerunt in unum adversus dominum et adversus Christum ejus. psalmus. Quare fremuerunt. antiphona. Diviserunt sibi vestimenta mea et super vestimentum meam miserunt sortem. psalmus. Deus deus meus respice. antiphona. Insurrexerunt in me testes iniqui et mentita est iniquitas sibi. psalmus. Dominus illuminatio mea. Vers. Diviserunt sibi vestimenta mea. Et super vestem meam miserunt sortem. Pater noster. cum prostratione dicatur. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 29.

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The unanswerable question is, of course, what the audience did at the end of the pageant. Did the play trigger the impulse to enact a creeping to the Cross, or was the distinction between dramatic mimesis and the ritual of worship understood so that no such thing would have crossed anyone’s mind? Had someone of Margery Kempe’s devotional fervour seen the York pageant of The Crucifixion, would they have been prompted into a customary act of adoration? At any rate, the cast had to let the actor who played Christ get down, and to take down the Cross before they moved on to the next station. This would necessarily have taken place in full public view. It would, therefore, have had to happen decorously but in such a way that signalled that this was a company dismantling a set so that it was not confused with the Deposition which would be enacted in the next pageant. The Butcher’s pageant of The Death of Christ which follows deploys other dimensions of the Passion narrative and the Good Friday liturgy. If the effect of The Crucifixion is to keep tight focus on the image of Christ on the Cross, this pageant populates the whole Golgotha scene and carries straight on to the burial sequence. This at least is the text in the Register; the Ordo paginarum, however, indicates that the burial was perhaps originally the matter of a separate pageant. 46 The pageant in the Register opens with Pilate addressing the audience: Sees, seniours, and see what I saie, Takis tente to my talkyng enteere. Devoyde all þis dynne here þis day, And fallis to my frenschippe in feere. Sir Pilate, a prince withowten pere, My name is full neuenly to neuen, And domisman full derworth in dere Of gentillest Jewry full euen Am I. Who makis oppressioun Or dose transgressioun, Be my discressioun Shall be demed dewly to dy.

1–11

The speech is attention-grabbing, and says ‘look at me’ because it has to: the speaking figure of Pilate is probably competing from the outset with the three silent bodies, Christ flanked by the two Thieves on their crosses, which he refers to in the second stanza: Who þat to 3one hill wille take heede May se þer þe soth in his sight

16–17

Pilate finishes by asserting: His bloode to spille Toke ye you tille. 46

This draws on Meg Twycross’s researches on the Ordo paginarum.

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The ensuing action proceeds according to a pattern of movement alternating with freeze-frame lyric interpolations. For example, the character called Garcio displays the vinegar rod, then says: A draughte here of drinke haue I dreste, To spede for no spence þat 3e spare, But baldely ye bib it for þe beste. For why Aysell and galle Is menged withalle; Drynke it 3e schalle ⎯ Youre lippis I halde þame full drye.

240–7

This is quite a long speech accompanying a short action. The significance of the vinegar rod, however, is that it is one of the Instruments of the Passion, an object of contemplation, and it is on this that the speech seems to make the audience focus, not on the action of administering the drink. References to the liturgy here are both specific and general. Specifically the contemplation of the Instruments of the Passion is there in the seventh verse of the Pange Lingua as sung in the Good Friday procession at the Adoration of the Cross: Here are the vinegar, the gall, the reed, the spittle, the nail, the spear – his meek body is pierced, a wave of blood flows forth; and with this river the earth, the sea, the stars, the world are washed 47

and a similar tell-and-show introduction accompanies the piercing of Christ’s side with the spear (292–312). These two moments in the play, and the final action of the Deposition, serve to direct the audience’s attention to the other Instruments of the Passion displayed in the scene on the wagon. In general, the pageant has a number of these moments, when narrative progress gives way to complete stasis, which are close in their register to liturgical ritual, such as when the Virgin delivers her planctus lyrics, and when Longeus delivers his hymn of praise for Christ’s restoration of his sight. We may assume that these were not sung, but they have a lyric quality which suggests that they could be. The planctus, anticipated in Mary’s lament for her child in The Flight into Egypt (Marshals, XVIII: 134–45), echoed in the laments of the Mothers of the Innocents (Girdlers and Nailers, XIX: 210–17), and in the laments of John and the Three Maries on the road to Calvary (Shearmen, XXXIV: 106–89), reaches its climax here: Allas for my swete sonne I saie, þat doulfully to dede þus is di3t. Allas, for full louely he laye In my wombe, þis worthely wight.

47

York Manual and Processional, 161: see above note 37.

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Allas þat I schulde see þis sight Of my sone so semely to see. Allas, þat þis blossome so bright Vntrewly is tugged to þis tree. Allas, My lorde, my leyffe, With full grete greffe Hyngis as a theffe. Allas, he did neuer trespasse.

131–43

Mary’s lament at the base of the Cross was a common paraliturgical lyric interpolation which flourished throughout the Middle Ages, in lyric verse as well as drama, in both Latin and vernaculars, under the influence of Franciscan spirituality and as part of the growing cult of the Seven Joys and Seven Sorrows of Our Lady. 48 Its most widely disseminated source is probably the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh chapters of the Speculum humanae salvationis (1324), which was translated into Middle English verse as The Mirour of Mans Saluacioune around the same time as the York Register was first compiled. 49 Although it does not appear in the York Use, a planctus was widely interpolated into the ceremony of the Adoration of the Cross in a number of elaborated Good Friday liturgies from as early as the tenth century. 50 Karl Young believed that it provided the starting point for the Latin dramas of the Passion which developed as liturgical tropes. 51 Biblical exegesis connects the planctus with Simeon’s prophecy at the Purification of the Virgin that she would participate fully in her son’s sorrows, from which derive the Church’s understanding of her special redemptive powers as mediatrix. 52 In the centrepiece of Roger van der Weyden’s ‘Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments’, the Virgin, surrounded by the weeping figures of the Three Maries, faints into the arms of St John in the foreground, under the shadow of a towering Cross, while in the background the tiny figure of a priest elevates the Host at the altar. 53 The departure of Christ’s soul from the earth at the moment of his death on the Cross and the mystical return of his Body to earth at the moment of the Elizabeth C. Parker, ‘Architecture as Liturgical Setting’ in The Liturgy of the Medieval Church, ed. Thomas J. Hefferman and E. Ann Matter (Kalamazoo:

48

Medieval Institute Publications, 2001), 273–326, at 322–3. 49 Speculum Humanae Salvationis, ed. J. Lutz and P. Perdrizet (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1907), 56; The Mirour of Mans Saluacioune, ed. Avril Henry (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1986), 143–9. 50 Sandro Sticca, The Planctus Mariae in the Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages, trans. Joseph R. Berrigan (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1988), 62–5. 51 Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 1, 538, cited in Sticca, Planctus, 172. 52 E.g. the seventeenth homily of Origen; the Officium de Compassione Beatae Mariae Virginis of Bonaventure. See Sticca, Planctus, 171–2. 53 Parker, ‘Architecture as Liturgical Setting’, 323–4.

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Consecration are fused in a single paradoxical image which encapsulates the mystical meaning of the Sacrament of the Altar and acknowledges the Virgin’s co-redemptive powers. Consequently the planctus, in which Mary, situated at the base of the Cross, laments her son’s departure from the world, has sacramental connotations correlative to his return at the moment of the Consecration of the Host. In the York Cycle, just as the recurrent greeting formula associated with Elevation lyrics is threaded through and unifies the otherwise disparate discourses of a number of pageants, so too voices raised in lament, anticipating and echoing the Virgin at the base of the Cross, supply a contrapuntal discourse which is both locally affective and supportive of sacramental orthodoxy. Jesus replies to his mother: Þou woman, do way of thy wepyng, For me may þou nothyng amende. My fadirs wille to be wirkyng. For mankynde my body I bende.

144–7

This is another lyric interpolation, the Stabat mater, another meditative verbal trope. Although this rendering of the words Christ spoke to his mother from the Cross as a liturgical hymn do not occur in liturgies of English Use until the eighteenth century, they occur in English lyric verse such as the dialogue lyric in BL MS Royal 12 E I, fol. 193r, which begins ‘Stond wel moder under roode’, and which is found in five other extant manuscripts of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. 54 This suggests that the liturgical source, probably by Innocent III or Jacopone da Todi, was known to English devotional writers in the period of the cycle. 55 The planctus, this echo of the conventional reply, and Longeus’s hymn, all arrest the narrative action of the Butchers’ pageant to emphasise the particular connotations of seeing the corpus Christi : O maker vnmade, full of myght, O Jesu so jentill and jente Þat sodenly has sente me my sight, Lorde, louyng to þe be it lente. On rode arte þou ragged and rente, Mankynde for to mende of his mys. Full spitously spilte is and spente Thi bloode, lorde, to bringe vs to blis Full free. A, mercy my socoure, Mercy, my treasoure, Mercy, my sauioure, 54 A Selection of Religious Lyrics, ed. Douglas Gray (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 18 and 111; Woolf, English Religious Lyric, 245–6. 55 New Catholic Encyclopaedia, sv ‘Stabat Mater’; also online at http://www. newadvent.org/cathen/14239b.htm.

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Þi mercy be markid in me.

300–12

What is demonstrated in the pageant is the effect of the sacrifice on the Cross and, by extension, of Christ’s Body and Blood in giving absolution at the end of the penitential process. The signifying moment in the action here is Christ’s forgiving the Good Thief. This is highlighted in the response to the second reading at Matins on Good Friday: Response. The veil of the Temple was rent and the whole earth trembled. The thief cried out from the Cross saying, ‘Remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom’. Verse. ‘Verily I say unto you, today you will be with me in paradise.’ ‘Remember …’ 56 In the pageant the two Thieves wrangle before Latro a Dextra asks forgiveness, and Christ responds: Forsothe sonne, to þe schall I saie, Sen þou fro thy foly will falle, With me schall dwelle nowe þis daye, In paradise place principall.

209–12

The whole narrative of the Crucifixion has, therefore, occupied three pageants, three Christs, and five Crosses. The Butchers’ pageant moves next into the Deposition and Burial sequence. Although the image of Christ’s body on the Cross is the central devotional image of the Christian faith, the process of taking that body down and burying it in the tomb is the pivotal moment in the Passion narrative which anticipates the Resurrection. In the Butchers’ pageant, as we shall see in the next chapter, much of the action is influenced by sacramental practices relating to the preparation of the dead for burial. The tomb in which it is laid would have been a contemporary mensa tomb rather than the biblical rock-hewn sarcophagus, not only because Christ’s sepulchre as a pilgrimage destination in Jerusalem had taken that form by the late Middle Ages, but because of the practice in popular worship which had grown up around the Easter Sepulchre. The common extra-liturgical finale to the Good Friday offices, undertaken in York Use immediately after the Adoration, involved taking the ceremonial Cross and ‘burying’ it in a specially prepared tomb. It would then be ‘raised’ at dawn on Easter Sunday. Sometimes not only was the Cross buried, but the Host was buried with it, despite the theological problems posed by burying the living God. In the most mimetically developed versions of the rite, a reliquary in the form of Christ on the Cross, with a compartment for the Host in Christ’s side, 56

York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 390: Velum templi scissum est et omnis terra tremuit latro de cruce clamabat dicens. Memento mei domine dum veneris in regnum tuum. V. Amen dico tibi hodie mecum eris in paradiso. Memento.

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would be buried. In ritual practice, the Burial, or Depositio, is inseparable from the Elevatio, or representation of the Resurrection, and the Visitatio, the representation of the visit of the Three Maries and their discovery of the empty tomb. (This Elevatio is not to be confused with the Elevation of the Host at Mass.) Whatever the sacramental symbolism the Easter Elevatio employs, it remains a memorial of the Resurrection and distinct from the Church’s ritual of transubstantiation. All three, Depositio, Elevatio, and Visitatio, enter English ritual practice early and are documented in the tenth-century Regularis Concordia. Karl Young prints in full a late-sixteenth-century account of an elaborate Depositio rite from Durham, little changed from the procedure set out in the Regularis Concordia and worth quoting in this context: Within the Abbye Church of Durham, uppon Good Friday theire was maruelous solemne seruice, in the which seruice time, after the Passion was sung, two of the eldest monkes did take a goodly large Crucifix, all of gold, of the picture 57 of our Sauiour Christ nailed uppon the crosse, lyinge upon a ueluett cushion, hauinge St Cuthbert’s armes uppon it all imbroydered with gold, bringinge that betwixt them uppon the said cushion to the lowest greeces in the quire, and there betwixt them did hold the said picture of our Sauiour, sittinge of euery side, on ther knees … 58

They then took turns in creeping to the Cross while the choir sang: The seruice beinge ended, the two monkes did carrye it to the Sepulchre with great reuerence, which Sepulchre was sett upp in the morninge, on the north side of the quire, nigh to the high altar, before the seruice time; and there did lay it within the said Sepulchre with great deuotion, with another picture of our Sauiour Christ, in whose breast they did enclose, with great reuerence, the most holy and blessed Sacrament of the altar, senceinge and prayinge vnto it uppon theire knees a great space … 59

As with the Stations of the Cross, the ritual practice was inspired by pilgrimage. On this occasion it is not the journey itself, but the destination, the Holy Sepulchre, which is the focus and which was emulated in a variety of forms from private funerary monuments to whole churches. The structure that evolved to accommodate the rite first described in an English context in the Regularis Concordia had to amalgamate the function of sepulchre and altar and had settled into the accepted pattern known as the Easter Sepulchre by the fourteenth

57 58 59

Picture meaning ‘depiction’. Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 1, 137. Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 1, 138.

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century. 60 Most Easter Sepulchres were temporary structures made of wood and embroidered cloths, always in the north aisle, although the disposition of permanent structures, such as flat altars and windows with Easter subject-matter in them, might indicate where the sepulchre was erected annually. Permanent Easter Sepulchres, where they existed, were constructed on the north chancel wall and could take the form of a niche, a table tomb with or without a canopy, a stone chest, or a separate chapel. In terms of its form, the Easter Sepulchre had funerary associations, and was indeed sometimes the memorial of an individual donor, but iconographically its associations are all with the Resurrection, incorporating the sleeping soldiers, the angel guarding the tomb, and the Three Maries. In all its various forms, the Easter Sepulchre was an ubiquitous appurtenance to English religious life by the time at which the York Cycle developed, and the dramatic character of the rituals associated with it could not help but influence mimetic presentations of the commemorated historical events in the pageants. As the Butchers’ Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea pronounce the last rites over the body of the dead Christ at the end of the pageant, the tomb in which they place the body would certainly have been recognisable as an Easter Sepulchre. What intervenes between the ritual celebration of Christ’s Burial and the Resurrection in the liturgy are now the rites of Easter Eve. These involved the making of the Paschal Candle and the hallowing of the font, both of which have sacramental connotations which are explained by John Mirk in his twenty-ninth sermon in the Festial. 61 What happens next in the York Cycle, however, is the Saddlers’ pageant of The Harrowing of Hell (XXXVII). The episode is marginal to the Easter liturgy, although in the Breviary at the second Nocturn for Holy Saturday the first and third antiphons refer to it: 62 Be lifted up, eternal gates, and the King of Glory will enter

and The Lord has brought my soul out of hell. It supplies the dramatists with a full historical sequence of events and a reprise of the fate of the Old Testament prophets and patriarchs. The source in the Apocrypha is well documented, and it was, throughout the Middle Ages, part of what was understood to be the Passion narrative. It has three main components: Christ’s Descent into Hell and See Pamela Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England (Early Drama, Art and Music Reference Series 5; Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1987). 61 Mirk, Festial, 124–9. The York rite can be found in York Missal, 109–125, York Manual and Processional, 165–70, and York Breviary, vol. 1, cols 400–403. 62 York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 397: Elevamini porte eternales et introibit rex glorie. Domine abstraxisti ab infernos animam meam. 60

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his breaking down of hell-gates by uttering the words of the twentyfourth Psalm, ‘Atollite portas …’; his disputation with the Devil, which often, as in Piers Plowman (B-text Passus 18) and the York pageant, takes the form of a quasi-legal debate about the extent of the latter’s ‘rights’; and the procession of the Old Testament prophets and patriarchs out of Limbo. 63 For lay worshippers what Christ’s soul was doing while his body lay in the tomb is embedded in the words of the Creed: The ferthe article is, that when he was dede, And his bodi tane doune, and wonden, and doluen Yit, to whiles that his bodi lai in the graue, The saule with the godhede went untill hell, And heried it, and toke oute thas that wer his, Als Adam and Eue, and othir forme-fadirs. 64 Karl Young finds Latin plays enacting the Harrowing of Hell preceding the Elevatio in, for example Barking, and demonstrates how the first element, with the accompanying Psalm, became adapted as the ritual for the consecration of churches. 65 Indeed the ritual circling and knocking at the door and entering the church on Palm Sunday, which caused Margery Kempe to make connections with the Harrowing of Hell rather than the Entry into Jerusalem as we saw above, certainly derives from a confusion of these physically similar rituals. For the vernacular dramatists the Harrowing of Hell was a necessary part of the action which offered an opportunity for spectacle and, like a number of other episodes, formed part of the history of the Devil, the stuff of orthodox exegetical material and gospel harmonies which was drawn on for preaching. 66 The Carpenters’ pageant of The Resurrection (XXXVIII), by contrast, draws on the rich liturgical heritage of the climax of the Church’s year, incorporating both the Elevatio, that is Christ’s rising from the tomb while the soldiers sleep, and the Visitatio, the visit of the Three Maries and the discovery of the empty tomb. This pageant more than any other in the cycle can trace its inspiration and dramatic heritage to liturgical drama. As Meg Twycross has pointed out:

The Resurrection is an extended Quem quaeritis; it goes to some trouble to make this quite clear. It is not particularly concerned with expressing the cosmic, triumphal aspects of the Resurrection; this has been done already in the preceding pageant of the Harrowing of Hell. Like the Quem quaeritis, 63 See M.R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924) 117–46; Rosemary Woolf, English Mystery Plays, 271–2. 64 Lay Folks’ Catechism, 28, lines 137–42; wonden, and doluen (line 138), ‘shrouded and buried’; forme-fadirs, ‘Patriarchs’. 65 Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 1, 149–77. 66 See further Woolf, English Mystery Plays, 271–2.

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which takes its essential character from an earlier age, it concentrates on the theme of bearing witness to the event, true witness and false witness. The evidence is scrupulously displayed, both by the Maries and the soldiers: the empty tomb; the sudary; the angelic message; the portents that surround the actual moment of Christ’s rising. 67

The moment of the Resurrection itself is ritually celebrated at dawn on Easter Sunday. In the York Processional the rubric is as follows: There follows the Mass in parish churches on Easter Day. At dawn, when the bells have been rung, and the clergy and people have gathered at the classicum (peal of all the bells at once), the Lord’s Prayer is to be said genuflecting; and afterwards the priest is to cense the tomb, and the sacrament is to be brought forth, with the image with the crown of thorns. 68

Another version reads: On Easter Day at the Resurrection, the bishop with his ministers, with silk copes, genuflecting before the tomb, is to say the Lord’s Prayer; and they are to rise and cense the tomb, and take the pyx with the Body and the cross, and, turning their faces to the people, the bishop is to begin the Response: ‘Christ rising from the dead ...’ 69

And the Sarum rite has a further and fuller variant: On Easter Day before Mass and before the ringing of the bells the clergy are to gather at the church, and all the lights throughout the church are to be lit. Two of the senior people with a candle-bearer and a thurifer, and the clergy standing round, are to approach the tomb, and, when the tomb has first been censed, with great veneration, immediately after the censing, genuflecting, are privately to place the Lord’s Body on the altar. Again, they are to take the cross from the tomb, and a senior person is to begin ‘Christ rising’; whereupon the procession is to go to the southern <part of the> presbytery, going down the middle of the choir, returning with the aforesaid cross taken from the tomb, carried in a reverent Meg Twycross, ‘Playing the Resurrection’ in Medieval Studies for J.A.W. Bennett, ed. P.L. Heyworth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 273–96, at 280–1. 68 York Manual and Processional, 170: Sequitur Missa in ecclesiis parochialibus in die Paschæ. In aurora pulsatis campanis, ad classicum congregato clero et populo, flexis genibus dicitur Oratio Dominicalis; et postea Sacerdos thurificet sepulcrum, et proferatur sacramentum cum imagine cum corona spinea. 69 York Manual and Processional, 170 note: In die Paschæ ad Resurrectionem Prælatus cum ministris cum Capis sericis, flexis genibus coram sepulchro, dicat Orationem Dominicam, et surgant, et thurificent sepulcrum, et accipiant pyxidem cum Corpore et Crucem, et versis vultibus ad populum incipiat Prælatus: Responsorium. Christus resurgens ex mortuis ... 67

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fashion between the aforesaid two priests, on their arms, with the thurifer and candle-bearer preceding, going out through the north door of the presbytery to one altar in the northern part of the church, with the choir following without changing their dress, with the senior people in front, leaving the Body of the Lord on the altar in the pyx, in the custody of the undertreasurer, who is to hang it in the aforesaid pyx in the tabernacle. 70

What all have in common is a mimetic dimension as they involve ‘resurrecting’ the Body of Christ as represented by the Cross (an image or statue) and/or the Host. Only in the Sarum rubric is the theological nicety observed, that the Host, as the perpetually living Christ, cannot have represented the dead Christ, and accordingly it is placed ‘privately’ on the altar. In the pageant, a stage direction in the hand of the main scribe reads simply, Tunc Jesus resurgente and John Clerke has written in the margin, Tunc angelus cantat Resurgens. 71 What happens to this musical accompaniment is that a tomb, presumably again in the form of an Easter Sepulchre, opens, and an actor representing the living Christ rises up and, presumably, walks away through the audience. Meg Twycross described this as an ‘outrageous thing to have to produce on stage’. 72 When she produced the play for the second time, on a pageant wagon in the streets of York, the masked actor, in a gold body-stocking, wearing only a white loin-cloth and red cloak and carrying the banner of the Resurrection, walked wordlessly through the crowd and off down the street until he was out of view. 73 The moment worked even then for the modern audience because they brought their own knowledge and experience to the event. The original audience would have recognised the actor as a living icon, and the anthem sung by the 70

71 72 73

York Manual and Processional, 170–1 note: In die Paschæ ante Missam et ante campanarum pulsationem conveniant clerici ad Ecclesiam, et accendantur omnia luminaria per Ecclesiam. Duo excellentiores personæ cum ceroferario et thuribulario et clero circumstante ad sepulchrum accedant, et incensato prius sepulchro, cum magna veneratione statim post thurificationem genuflectendo Corpus Dominicum privatim super altare deponant. Iterum accipient crucem de sepulchro et incipiat excellentior persona Christus resurgens, cum quo eat Processio ad presbyterium australe incedendo per medium Chori, regrediens cum prædicta cruce de sepulchro assumpta inter duos Sacerdotes prædictos, super eorum brachia venerabiliter portata cum thuribulario et ceroferario præcedente per ostium Presbyterii boreale exeundo ad unum altare ex parte boreali Ecclesiæ, Choro sequente habitu non mutato, excellentioribus præcedentibus, Corpore vero Dominico super altare in pyxide dimisso in subthesaurarii custodia, qui illud in prædicta pyxide in tabernaculo dependeat. York Plays, ed. Beadle, 349 note. Twycross, ‘Playing the Resurrection’, 289. York Festival production by Joculatores Lancastrienses, 1992.

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Angel would instantly call to mind the ritual of Easter morning. Of course, as Eamon Duffy would point out, representations of Christ, be they crosses, statues, or even living actors, are just that, whereas the Host when it was used in the Easter rite was the risen Christ. Nonetheless, this pageant surely provides an example of where we must balance affective impact against intellectual understanding, mimesis against anagogic representation. An audience member witnessing the moment of the Resurrection in the York pageant would surely be moved by the eeriness and audacity of the theatrical moment implied by that laconic stage direction. Of course it is possible that, as Christ has nothing to say, the devisers of the pageant represented Christ by a model, but the evidence of the 1415 Ordo paginarum, where the synopsis of action commonly doubles as a cast list, is that someone played Christ, and that his moment is the culmination of the cycle’s representation of the events celebrated in the equally memorable special rituals associated with Holy Week in the calendar of public worship. 74 The Resurrection of Christ is a defining moment and a dramatic climax in the York Play designed for the celebration of Corpus Christi. It recapitulates the climax of the liturgical feast of Easter in a context which marks the continual mystical return of Christ in the flesh in the Host at Mass. In the pageants which follow on immediately from The Resurrection, Christ makes four further appearances, in Christ’s Appearance to Mary Magdalene 75 (Winedrawers, XXXIX), The Supper at Emmaus (Woolpackers and Woolbrokers, XL), The Incredulity of Thomas (Scriveners, XLI), and The Ascension (Tailors, XLII). Immediately after that, follows the pageant of Pentecost (Potters, XLIII), in which the Holy Ghost descends to the Virgin Mary and the disciples. In terms of the liturgical calendar, these events bring the cycle up to Corpus Christi itself, as Pentecost, a feast in its own right, occurs on the seventh Sunday after Easter, one week before Trinity Sunday and, therefore, only eleven days before Corpus Christi Day. Christ then descends to earth one more time in the cycle in The Last Judgement (Mercers, XLVII) with which the cycle closes. 76 Christ’s rising is not the end of The Resurrection pageant, and a return to consider what happens next, and how the dramatist treats that material, informs our understanding of the form taken by the subsequent five pageants in the cycle. What follows immediately after the moment of the Resurrection itself in the Carpenters’ pageant is an English version of the Quem quaeritis. The Quem quaeritis is set apart as a trope in the Easter liturgy from a very early date, first appearing in

74 75 76

REED: York, 22. Magdalen spelt this way in Beadle’s edition.

See 27–8 above.

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the tenth-century English Regularis Concordia. 77 It is a dialogue between the Three Maries and the Angel at the sepulchre, beginning:

Angel Maries Angel

Quem queritis in sepulchro, O Christicole? Ihesum nazarenum crucifixum, O celicola. Non est hic: surrexit sicut predixerat. Ite, nuntiate quia surrexit a mortuis. 78

The dialogue form taken by the trope has no direct source in the Gospels. It is a conflation of the various gospel accounts – principally Mark 16: 1–7, the Gospel for Easter Sunday, and Matthew 28: 1–10, the Gospel for the Vigil of Easter – structured for the purposes of the trope on antiphonal principles. None of the York service books contain a Quem quaeritis, but the opening words are echoed in the offertory for the Mass on the following day, Easter Monday, and in the gradual on the Tuesday, 79 and it must have been familiar to the York dramatist, as can be seen particularly in lines 235–40 of the pageant: 80

Angelus 1 Maria Angelus

3e mournand women in youre þought, Here in þis place whome haue 3e sought? Jesu, þat to dede is brought, Oure lorde so free. Women, certayne here is he noght, Come nere and see.

The pageant then singles out Mary Magdalen to remain behind at the tomb continuing to lament at her loss and to recollect the events of 77 Thomas B. Campbell, ‘Liturgical Drama and Community Discourse’, in Hefferman and Matter, Liturgy of the Medieval Church, 619–44, 623–8. Some surviving macaronic fragments from an Officium Resurreccionis in die Pasche in a manuscript now in Shrewsbury, but possibly from Cheshire or north Staffordshire, are printed by Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 2, 514–16, and edited by Norman Davis in Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, EETS SS1 (1970), 3–4 and xiv–xxii. Though the Officium Pastorum in the same manuscript shares dialogue with the York Shepherds pageant, this has no dialogue in common with the York Resurrection pageant. 78 Text from the Regularis Concordia (c. 973) in Sheingorn, Easter Sepulchre, 19; translated Twycross, ‘Theatre’, in Blackwell Companion to the Bible and Culture: ‘Whom do you seek in the sepulchre, O worshippers of Christ?’ ‘Jesus of Nazareth the crucified, O dweller in heaven.’ ‘He is not here: He has risen, as He foretold. Go, report that He has risen from the dead.’ 79 York Missal, vol. 1, 128: Angelus Domini descendit de caelo, et dixit mulieribus: quem quæritis? Surrexit, sicut dixit, alleluia and 129: Respondens autem angelus dixit mulieribus: Quem quæritis? Illæ autem dixerunt: Jesum Nazarenum. 80 Rosemary Woolf, comparing the York treatment with other English vernacular versions, remarked upon how the encounter was ‘touchingly done’, and on how ‘deftly’ the dramatist fitted the trope into his stanza form. Woolf, English Mystery Plays, 278.

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the Crucifixion. This has no direct Gospel parallel in accounts of the visits by the three women. In Mark’s account (16: 8) all three women run away in terror. All three also leave instantly in the parallel account in Luke’s Gospel (24: 4–12), whereas in Matthew’s account (28: 1–10), they leave joyfully having heard the news and then all three meet with the risen Christ. In the more evolved versions of the Latin drama where the encounter described by Matthew is not enacted, however, a lament in the voice of the Magdalen was inserted to make a smooth transition between the visit of all three Maries to the tomb and her lone encounter with Christ in the garden. 81 Its source is the account in John 20: 1–18, where the visit to the tomb is made by Mary Magdalen, Peter, and John, and Mary stays behind alone weeping, then meets Christ the gardener. In other words, the tropes behave in a way similar to gospel harmonies, such as Nicholas Love’s Mirror, where Mary’s weeping at the tomb triggers the appearance of Christ to console her as a ‘wondurfull worching of loue’. 82 The pageants adopt a similar narrative synthesis of the varying Gospel accounts. In the liturgy of York Use, with which the whole community of performers and audience of these pageants would have been familiar, the Gospels at Mass for the week following Easter Sunday are given over to appearances of Christ following the Resurrection. On Easter Monday, the text is Luke 24: 13–35, the story of how Christ accepted hospitality from two pilgrims on the road to Emmaus, and how he broke bread with them. This is followed on Tuesday by Luke 24: 36–47, his appearance to his disciples immediately after the pilgrims have told them of their experience, and again involves food. John 21: 1–14 is the reading on Wednesday, the account of his appearance to his disciples on the fishing trip in the sea of Tiberias, and the eating of bread and fish. On Thursday John 20: 11–18 is read, the account of Christ’s appearance as the gardener to Mary Magdalen. Then on Friday follows Matthew 28: 16–20, the account of his appearance to his disciples in Galilee immediately after the Maries have left the tomb, and his instructions to them that they should go out and preach. On Saturday, the reading is John 20: 1–9, not an account of an appearance but of Mary Magdalen’s finding of the empty tomb and how she shows it to Peter who believes that Christ has risen. Then on the Sunday after Easter, the reading is John 20: 19–31, the account of doubting Thomas. Even given the variations in the accounts of events immediately following the Resurrection in the four Gospels, the liturgical readings do not follow anything approaching an historical sequence. Rather they seem to begin with ‘simple’ appearances and then work their way back recursively to the empty tomb, to the question of belief and disbelief in the nature of the event, and to the future role of the disciples. 81 82

Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 1, 381. Love, Mirror, ed. Sargent, 196–7.

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In the cycle, historical order is rectified. The Resurrection concludes with the debate between the Soldiers, then with Annas, Caiaphas, and Pilate, on how the Resurrection is to be concealed from the populace, before the weeping figure of the Magdalen reappears at the opening of the following pageant, Christ’s Appearance to Mary Magdalene (Winedrawers, XXXIX). A number of things then unite the little sequence of pageants in which Christ makes his post-Resurrection appearances. This pageant, The Supper at Emmaus, and The Incredulity of Thomas all open with a lament for the absence of Christ, echoing the lament of the Magdalen at the empty tomb and involving a meditative recapitulation of the pains Christ suffered during the Passion. The first of these is clearly again given by Mary Magdalen herself, but is taken up by the two Peregrini on the road to Emmaus and by St Peter in the opening of The Incredulity of Thomas. In all three pageants, this is the first part in a tripartite structural pattern. Lament is followed by the appearance of Christ. In the Appearance to Mary Magdalene, he displays his wounds but will not let her touch him: Goo awaye Marie, and touche me no3t, But take goode kepe what I schall saie: I ame hee þat all thing wroght, Þat þou callis þi lorde and God verraye. With bittir dede I mankynde boght, And I am resen as þou se may. 72–7 In The Supper at Emmaus the pilgrims recognise Christ when he breaks bread with them, and finally in The Incredulity of Thomas he appears to the disciples, displays his wounds and invites them, ‘gropes me nowe’ (58). He then also agrees to eat with them in order that they will believe in him: And for 3e schall wanhope forgete And trowe in me, With youe þan here wol I ete, 75–8 Þat 3e schalle see. In this pageant the pattern then repeats as Thomas arrives, laments the loss of Christ, and then has to feel his wounds in order to believe. The final part of the pattern in all three pageants is that at the end the participants are all dispatched to spread the word and to bear witness to the Resurrection. Rosemary Woolf identified this tripartite pattern in thematic terms as ‘loss, recognition and recovery’. 83 The verbal forms, and the accompanying visual effects implied by the texts, also suggest a repeated structural patterning which reflects the main thrust of the liturgy for the week following Easter. Repeated formulaic expressions of loss which dwell on the pain of the Passion are 83

Woolf, English Mystery Plays, 280.

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countered by evidence of the bodily presence of Christ. This takes two forms: the first involves the displaying of the bleeding body, the second involves partaking of food. The metonymic association of both with the Sacrament of the Altar would be reinforced for the audience by the visual effects involved, particularly the representation of the bleeding body sharing food with the disciples, probably designed to be recollective of the Last Supper. In the Tailors’ play of The Ascension (XLII), Christ himself makes the point that he has spent forty days eating and spending time with them so that they will be in no doubt of his Resurrection: But sithen I haue Ben walkand fourty daies aboute, Eten with 3ou, youre trouthe to saue, Comand emange 3ou inne and oute. And þerfore beis no more in were Of myne vpperysing, day nor nyght.

93–8

These lines draw on the argument presented in the sermon of Gregory the Great which is the first Reading and response for Ascension Day in the Breviary. 84 They come in the middle of Christ’s very long valedictory speech (37–176) in which he also predicts bodily resurrection for all on Doomsday (105–12); tells how the tree of the Cross recovered from the fiend that which he had won through the other tree in Eden (113–20); and promises that he himself will return again in the flesh on Doomsday (121–8). He then establishes that the intervening period will be one of bearing witness to his Resurrection. Christ’s Ascension, body and soul, into heaven is narrated in Mark 16: 19, Luke 24: 51, and Acts 1: 1–11, the first and last of these providing readings at the special Mass for the day in the Use of York. 85 It is the last appearance of Christ in corporeal form, and the feast which celebrates it was marked in a number of ways by the medieval Church, including the blessing of first fruits, torch and banner processions, and in some places by actually elevating a representation of Christ through the church roof over the altar. 86 Although York had a special liturgy for the day, involving antiphons, hymns, and verses with special settings, unfortunately there is nothing in the rubrication in any of the service books to suggest that anything beyond some additional processing took place. The pageant, by contrast, is longer and more elaborate than the preceding three, demanding a large cast and an elaborate set that enables Christ to disappear in a cloud. There are, however, points of York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 478. York Missal, vol. 1, 147–8. See for example New Catholic Encyclopaedia, svv Feast of the Ascension, also online at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01767b.htm; Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 1, 483–9. 84 85 86

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contact: for example, both liturgy and pageant represent Christ’s Ascension as the moment when the Virgin Mary once again assumes centre stage, this time in the role of mediatrix. This is marked in the Processional for the Vigil of the Ascension by the opening verse of the litany of the Saints, ‘Saint Mary, pray for us’. 87 And in the pageant the Ascension itself is accompanied by angels singing, Ascendo ad patrem meum (‘I ascend to my Father’), which is one of the special liturgical antiphons of the day, the Thursday following the fifth Sunday after Easter and therefore three weeks to the day before Corpus Christi. 88 Pentecost, the celebration of the descent of the Holy Ghost to bestow the gift of tongues on the apostles, is the last feast in the Church’s calendar before Corpus Christi itself. It signals the termination of the paschal season, and was also marked by a special liturgy in the Use of York. It is not altogether clear how the Potters staged the descent of the Holy Ghost in their pageant, though after the event, during which a choir of angels sings Veni creator spiritus, the hymn special to Pentecost sung at Terce in the Breviary, 89 Peter says: I myght no3t loke, so was it light

and

His holy goste here haue we hente; Like to þe sonne itt semed in sight.

111

114–15

The Potters did not have the advantage of the indoor settings which allowed the producers of Latin plays to fill the church with incense to represent a cloud, though they possibly followed a model something similar to that which Young notes from Halle, where a (presumably artificial) dove was lowered surrounded by a ring of lighted candles. 90 In some liturgies the gift of tongues was represented by the mingling in of Greek and Hebrew words. 91 Just as there is no indication of a mechanical dove in the liturgy of York Use, however, there is no macaronic text; the day’s celebration being confined to some additional processing with special antiphons, verses, and responses. 92 In the pageant the English text is interspersed with a number of lines in Latin, written in red in the Register, so is macaronic. Some of the Latin lines are hypermetrical, some integrated into the stanza form. In the first category are the lines:

87 88

York Manual and Processional, 186: Sancta Maria ora pro nobis. York Breviary, vol. 1, 480:

Ascendo ad patrem meum et patrem vestrum deum meum et deum vestrum allelluia. The full offices for Ascension Day and its Vigil are in cols 473–84. 89 York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 503. 90 Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 1, 489–91. 91 Young, Drama of the Medieval Church, vol. 1, 489. 92 York Manual and Processional, 187–8.

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Nobis precepit dominus predicare populo, et testificare quia 13–14 prope est iudex viuorum et mortuorum spoken by Peter at the end of the first stanza of the pageant and, therefore, before he has actually received the gift of tongues. This is a direct quotation from the Lesson in the Missal for the second weekday after Pentecost (Whit Monday), taken from Acts 10: 42–8, which reports how the Holy Ghost descended on Jews and Gentiles alike, after Peter’s revelation that his mission should also be to the Gentiles. 93 The speech by John which follows on from Peter’s is also completed by two hypermetrical lines in Latin, this time the verse:

Cum venerit paraclitus Docebit vos omnia.

35–6

This is a ‘quotation’ of the evangelist’s own words, being an adaptation of John 14: 26. John 14: 23–31 is the Gospel for Mass at Pentecost. 94 Then the speech of James which follows next is interspersed with two Latin lines, this time as part of the body of the stanza: 3a, certaynely he saide vs soo, And mekill more þanne we of mene: ‘Nisi ego abiero’ Þus tolde he ofte-tymes vs betwene. He saide, forsoth, ‘But if I goo Þe holy goste schall not be sene,

Et cum assumptus fuero

Þanne schall I sende 3ou comforte clene’

37–44

These are taken from the antiphon sung at Vespers on the Vigils of both the feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost, an adaptation of John 16: 7–8, the Gospel for the fourth Sunday after Easter: Nisi ego abiero paraclitus non veniet: dum assumptus fuero mittam vobis. 95 After the descent of the Holy Ghost, Mary and Peter speak followed by five unnamed Apostles. I Apostolus repeats the words of the hymn the angels have sung, translating it into English: ‘Veni creator spiritus

Mentes tuorum visita.’ Þei praied þe spirite come till vs And mende oure myndis with mirthis ma ...

93

94 95

York Missal, vol. 1, 154; Acts 10: 42:

135–8

And he commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is he who was appointed by God, to be judge of the living and of the dead. See York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 487; York Missal, vol. 1, 153. York Missal, vol. 1, 143; York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 475, 497: Unless I go away the Holy Ghost will not come: when I have ascended He will be sent to you.

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And, in the following stanza, III Apostolus takes up the theme and continues by glossing words from the Gospel for the third Sunday after Easter (John 16: 16–22), an adaptation of John 16: 20: 96 ‘Tristicia impleuit cor vestrum’ – Firste sorowe in herte he vs hight; ‘Sed conuertetur in gaudium’. Sen saide he þat we schulde be light.

147–50

Finally, after an intervention by two Jewish ‘Doctors’ commenting on how the apostles ‘leris langage of ilk a lande’ (158), Peter speaks telling the Jews of their error, and finishes with another two hypermetrical lines: ‘Et erit in nouissimis diebus, dicit dominus, 193–4 effundam de spiritu meo super omnem carnem’ this time, as Peter says, adapted from the prophecy of Joel (2: 28), which is read at Mass on the Saturday following Pentecost, five days before Corpus Christi: 97 And it shall come to pass after this, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh ...

Hereafter the disciples take their leave of Mary and disperse. The Potters’ pageant of Pentecost, therefore, uses the Latin of the liturgy, scattered through the Middle English of the verse dialogue, to demonstrate and represent the gift of tongues. It completes the postEaster narrative of the preparation of the disciples for their ministry. To speak the liturgy, it seems, is to bear witness to Christ’s bodily Resurrection and to have received the gift of the Holy Ghost. The event, and the festal liturgy supplying the words in which it was celebrated, would have been fresh in the minds of worshippers a matter of days later at Corpus Christi.

96 97

York Missal , vol. 1, 142; York Breviary, vol. 1, col. 457. York Missal, vol. 1, 161.

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Chapter 7

The Sacraments of the Church In the preceding two chapters we have seen how the York Cycle is influenced by the special festive liturgies of Christmas and of Holy Week in its presentation of the events which those feasts celebrate. Up until now, we have been concentrating on the liturgy, on worship, as a communal experience governed by a calendar. There are, however, liturgical forms and occasions for worship which also influenced the cycle and which are neither part of the regular annual cycle, nor communal. They are the sacraments of the Church, of which communion is only one of seven. They are also festal, being ‘special occasions’ for the participating individual. Many of them are once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Moreover, in the late Middle Ages, the laity was prepared for participation in the sacraments with catechetical material which received careful attention and was comparatively theologically complex. The York Cycle does not have an Expositor figure whose function it is to offer an instructional gloss on the action, nor does it offer systematic treatment of the Seven Sacraments. The pageants were, however, written for performance at the Feast of Corpus Christi, the annual celebration of the Sacrament of the Altar, and therefore centrally concerned with promoting sacramentalism. Accordingly it is not surprising to find that it attends carefully to its treatment of individual sacraments when the occasion arises in the narrative scheme. Most obviously the cycle unavoidably involves the enactment of the Baptism and the Last Supper, both accounts of the institution of a sacrament. Elsewhere, as we shall see, where sacramental subject-matter arises in the pageants its handling by the dramatists is intricate. They can be observed mediating different types of liturgical material, negotiating the relationship between historical mimesis and the anagogical, and maintaining tight control of the semiotics of address which sometimes shifts into direct instructional mode. Few Seven Sacraments sequences survive in the visual arts, but there are sufficient to establish that the dominant iconography connected the performance of the sacraments with the effusions of blood from Christ’s body at the Crucifixion. All are, thereby, connected through the meaning of the Sacrament of the Altar. In all the surviving sequences, Christ is central to the composition. In stained glass, in the South of England he is shown exhibiting the wounds of the Passion, in the North as Christ Crucified, but in all cases the scenes depicting the individual 169

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sacraments are connected to the central figure by streams of blood emanating from the wounds, the Five Wounds connecting differently in different places to the sequence of Seven Sacraments. 1 On fonts, the eighth side of the font is either a scene of Christ’s Baptism by John the Baptist or a Crucifixion. Surviving northern witnesses to the dominant iconography include the glass in the tiny remote church of St Anthony, Cartmel Fell, Cumbria, built in the early sixteenth century, but containing in its east window fragments of the Seven Sacraments from a late-fifteenth-century sequence identifiably from a York glass-painting workshop. 2 Rushforth also recorded a sequence in glass of around the same period from St Sampson’s Church in York. 3 Otherwise fragments of sequences in glass from the end of the fifteenth century survive in two locations in Lincolnshire, at Ayscoughfee Hall, 4 and Tattershall Collegiate Church, 5 and there was a fresco sequence at Kirton in Lindsey Church, also in Lincolnshire. 6 Nichols’ specialist study of Seven Sacraments sequences on East Anglian fonts offers a useful analysis of the three forms that visual presentation of the sacraments can take. They can be illustrative, where a particular historical instance of the administration of the sacrament is shown. 7 They can be typological, and all the sacraments have a biblical typology in some schemata such as the woodblocks in Vérard’s L’art de bien vivre et bien mourir. 8 Or they can be theological, that is nonspecific as to time, place, or person, where nothing is added to detract from the essential ritual action. The first two definitions relate to what we have been calling mimetic, while the third refers to the anagogic understanding of the ritual. The surviving pageants in which there are opportunities to represent the sacraments acknowledge the special status of their material to varying degrees and also deploy different forms of representation.

1 See G.McN. Rushforth, ‘Seven Sacraments Compositions in English Medieval Art’, The Antiquaries Journal 9 (1929), 83–100, at 89–92; and Nichols, Seeable Signs. Rushforth’s analytical synopsis of surviving sequences in glass and fresco remains authoritative though more recently Nichols, in writing about East Anglian octagonal fonts, has explored another major source. 2 Observations of the glass in situ, supplemented by notes available in the church. The glass was reputedly moved there at the Dissolution from the nearby Cartmel Priory, where glass of the same date and style on other subjects still survives. 3 Rushforth, ‘Seven Sacraments Compositions’, 92–3. 4 P. Hebgin-Barnes, The Medieval Stained Glass of the County of Lincolnshire (Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi, Great Britain: Summary Catalogue 3; Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1996) 264, 268. 5 Hebgin-Barnes, Stained Glass of Lincolnshire, 304, 306, 329, and plate 20. 6 Rushforth, ‘Seven Sacraments Compositions’, 92–3. 7 Nichols, Seeable Signs, 279. 8 Paris: Antoine Vérard for André Bocard, February 12, ‘1453’ (1493/4).

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As we saw in Chapter 2 above, 9 the Barbers’ pageant of The Baptism (XXI) is precise and complex at the level of detail, synthesising the two readings on the Baptism in Matthew 3: 13–17 and John 1: 29–34. From Matthew comes John’s protest that Jesus should rather baptise him, the account of the moment of the Baptism itself, and the descent of the Holy Ghost. This is the source of the common iconography of the Baptism, where the Baptist stands over Christ in the water and sometimes a dove hovers overhead, representing simultaneously what happens sequentially in the gospel account. 10 A fragment of a scene such as this survives in the stained glass in the church of St John the Evangelist, Micklegate, York. 11 Although Sacraments sequences on fonts, as also in the Tattershall glass, generally show infant baptism, the Baptism of Christ in Jordan is the eighth scene on a number of octagonal Seven Sacraments fonts, second only to the Crucifixion in popularity. 12 John’s Gospel provides the chronologically earlier sequence in which the Baptist identifies Jesus as the Redeemer, Ecce agnus Dei … qui tollit peccatum mundi (John 1: 29: ‘Behold the Lamb of God … who taketh away the sin of the world’; words which are incorporated, slightly adapted, into the Canon of the Mass) and as the Deity, existing outside of time: Post me venit vir qui ante me factus est, quia prior me erat (John 1: 30: ‘After me there cometh a man who is preferred before me: because he was before me’). The pageant, however, opens with the character of the Baptist complaining about the difficulty of converting the populace. His first three stanzas, closely following John’s Gospel, explore the interrelationship between conversion, witness, and prophecy. The speech is one of many in the cycle with ambiguous deixis, ostensibly addressed to God, but as the Baptist is reporting on how he preaches that people should prepare themselves for baptism, he is also indirectly instructing the audience: Loke þou make þe redy – ay saide I – Vnto oure lord God most of myght, Þat is þat þou be clene haly In worde, in werke ay redy dight Agayns oure lord, 9 10

See 41–4 above. See, for example, the scene imaginatively arranged to occupy one of the Norwich Cathedral roof bosses: Martial Rose and Julia Hedgecoe, Stories in Stone: The Medieval Roof Carvings of Norwich Cathedral (London: Herbert Press, 1997), 128, in which Christ is accompanied by a man removing his hose and waiting to be the next to be baptised. 11 F. Harrison, The Painted Glass of York: An Account of the Medieval Glass of the Minster and the Parish Churches (London: SPCK, 1927), 186. 12 See E.G. Tasker, Encyclopedia of Medieval Church Art (London: Batsford, 1993), 195–201 for illustrations of a number of sacraments sequences.

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With parfite liffe þat ilke a wight Be well restored. For if we be clene in levyng, Oure bodis are Goddis tempyll þan. In the whilke he will make his dwellyng. Therfore be clene, bothe wiffe and man, Þis is my reed; God will make in yowe haly þan His wonnyng-steed.

29–42

Increasingly, desire to instruct about the sacrament appears to vanquish historical verisimilitude. The Baptist continues after the Angels have arrived: Bot wele I wote, baptyme is tane To wasshe and clense man of synne, And wele I wotte þat synne is none In hym, withoute ne withinne. 77–80

The Lay Folks’ Catechism defines baptism in similar terms, also giving

prominence to the correctness of the words which must be said in the sacrament: ‘I baptize the in the name / Of the Fadir & the Son, & the Hali Gast’. 13 Inevitably in the pageant, too, the exact words are repeated by the Baptist (149–50), and Christ is duly baptised in his own name. The Catechism emphasises the role of holy water: Another is, that it be done anely in water, For nanothir licour is leuefull tharfore Trinity MS, 288–9

and it is Jesus in the pageant who accordingly pronounces: Þe vertue of my baptyme dwelle In baptyme-watir euere and ay ...

101–2

Both texts clearly derive their instructions for the procedure of the sacrament from the liturgical Manual. 14 The pageant also twice connects Baptism with the larger redemption narrative, first when John prophesies that Jesus, ‘schall giffe baptyme more entire / In fire and gaste’ (12–13), referring specifically to Pentecost, and secondly when Jesus’ own voice, at the end of the pageant, promises: What man þat trowis and baptised bes Schall saued be and come to blisse. Whoso trowes no3t, to payne endles He schal be dampned sone, trowe wele þis.

162–5

There is some textual disruption around line 80, at the moment when Christ appears, but the pageant is complete enough to show clearly 13 14

The Lay Folks’ Catechism, ed. Simmons and Nolloth, 62; Trinity MS, lines 286–7. York Manual and Processional, 5–22.

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what its author’s project was. He constructed his text not only as a mimetic representation of the Baptism of Christ by John, but foregrounded the anagogic meaning of the event in order to offer instruction on the meaning of the sacrament of Baptism. Moreover the fact that this is drama allowed that instruction to be given ultimate authority by being spoken by the character of John the Baptist himself. The Bakers’ Last Supper (XXVII) is the other complete pageant which has to mediate the historical gospel account with its recurrent sacramental re-enactment. Both pageants draw their main narrative from the Missal, 15 but The Baptism uses the Manual for the formulaic elements in its dialogue. The Last Supper draws on the rubrics for Maundy Thursday in the Missal which outline the procedures for the footwashing 16 but, since John’s Gospel does not describe the Last Supper, on the Common of the Mass itself for the distribution of the bread and wine. The special relationship between Maundy Thursday and the Mass is not only historical, in that the day commemorates the Last Supper, it is also a matter of ritual: the Maundy Thursday Mass was particularly elaborate as it involved the consecration and reservation of a second Host for use on Good Friday when no consecration could take place. Like The Baptism, the pageant begins by going back to explain where the sacrament about to be enacted comes from. This involves glossing Exodus 12 in order to relate the meaning of the Passover feast to the Eucharist which supplanted it as a type of sacrifice. Again, as in The Baptism, instruction is delivered by direct address from Christ himself on the Old and New Laws. Before the sacrament is instituted, however, the pageant follows a narrative sequence which seems to have been the popular understanding of what took place on Maundy Thursday, that is, that the foot-washing was followed by the Supper itself. This also echoes the sequence of events as represented in the liturgy for the day, whereas in the Bible, Matthew and Mark do not mention the foot-washing at all, and in John’s Gospel, the foot-washing takes place in the middle of the Supper, but there is no account of the institution of the sacrament. The Gospel for the day is John 13: 1–15, the account of the foot-washing, followed after Vespers by a reading of the whole of John 13 and 14, accompanied by a representation of the Supper, described thus by the rubricators: In the meantime table-cloths and wafers, with wine, are to be placed before the bishop and the others sitting together by the ministers of the church, as if to dine. 17

15 For the Baptism, two Gospels: Matthew 3: 13–17 on the Sunday within the Octave of Epiphany, and John 1: 29–34 on the Octave. See above page 41. 16 York Missal, vol. 1, 101. This takes place at Vespers. 17 York Missal, vol. 1, 97, 101:

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The stage direction at line 60, Tunc lauat manus, the detail that Christ washed his own hands after washing the feet of his disciples, demonstrates a degree of attention to detail here. The following leaf in the manuscript, which Richard Beadle calculates contained 53 lines dealing with the whole of the institution of the Eucharist, 18 has been excised. The action then resumes with Christ’s prediction of the betrayal and Passion, drawing now on Mark 14 for his warning to the disciples of their future need to defend themselves when the ‘shepherd’ has gone. There is no way of knowing how the institution of the Eucharist would have been enacted, but the other liturgical text on which the dramatist may have drawn is the Epistle for Maundy Thursday, 1 Corinthians 11: 20–32, including verses 23–6 which passed into the Canon of the Mass: 23 For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread, 24 And giving thanks, broke, and said: Take ye and eat: this is my body, which shall be delivered for you: this do for the commemoration of me. 25 In like manner also the chalice, after he had supped, saying: This chalice is of the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as often as ye shall drink, for the commemoration of me. 26 For as often as ye shall eat this bread, and drink the chalice, you shall shew the death of the Lord, until he come. 19

Given the confined space available for performance, whatever took place must have been economical and straightforward. A Last Supper scene set out with the disciples at table is common in contemporary visual art, and could have been what was represented in the pageant. Visual representations rarely show them seated around the table, perhaps because of the difficulties of perspective, but tend to show them lined up along one side, as in the famously iconic example by Leonardo da Vinci. 20 It could equally have been that in the pageant the disciples lined up standing, then knelt to receive the Sacrament, as Rosemary Woolf believes may have been the case with the N. Town pageant and as shown in Fra Angelico’s Last Supper in the convent of San Marco. 21 The only clue is that Jesus says, ‘array 3ou all on rawe’ Interim a ministris ecclesiæ ponantur coram Prælato et ceteris consedentibus mappæ et nebulæ cum vino, quasi ad cenandum. 18 York Plays, ed. Beadle, 230–31. 19 York Missal, vol. 1, 97. 20 Tasker, Encyclopedia, 57, cites the Somerton reredos and a wall-painting at Ashby St Ledgers for this arrangement, whereas the Norwich Cathedral roof boss (Rose and Hedgecoe, Stories in Stone, 97) shows an ‘aerial’ view to the viewer standing beneath it, of the (nine) participants seated round a rectangular table. 21 Woolf, English Mystery Plays, 233.

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(19) before the foot-washing, which points to something more explicitly ritualised than a gathering round a table. But in focusing on this pageant for instruction on the Sacrament of the Altar we may be making the same mistake as the owner of the hand that removed the leaf: because the whole cycle was designed to embellish the Feast of Corpus Christi, the impact of the Sacrament of the Altar is not restricted to a single pageant but is threaded through the whole cycle like the streams of blood from Christ’s wounded side which unite Seven Sacraments sequences in stained glass. The scene which most commonly represents the Sacrament of the Altar in the visual arts, from those found on East Anglian fonts to the famous Antwerp altarpiece by Van der Weyden, is not the Last Supper but the moment of the Elevation of the Host, conducted by a priest in a chasuble. The Elevation is not an historical event but the moment in daily worship which bears witness to the fact that the consecrated bread and wine of the Sacrament really are the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, and the anagogical renewal of the promise made at the Last Supper is borne out for believers in ritual practice. It is this repeated transformation, rather than the historical one which took place at the Last Supper, which the Feast of Corpus Christi was instituted to celebrate. In the York Cycle, a number of different types and modes of allusion to the Sacrament of the Altar point to the complex nexus of ritual and drama which is there to be explored. The Last Supper is a simple dramatic enactment of the institution of the Eucharist, as Christ broke bread (probably) and uttered the words of the officiating priest. Elsewhere the cycle seems to mediate the transformational power of the ritual’s meaning. It is a moot point whether in drama the audience was more affected by looking at a wafer, which commonly was God’s Body following consecration, or whether to look at a mimetic representation of Christ in the form of a living, breathing actor had greater impact. Other instances in which the authors of the York pageants find opportunities to incorporate references to, and offer instruction on, the sacraments have to be looked for. Baptism, Communion, and Penance are probably the three sacraments which most frequently touched the lives of the laity. The episode of the Woman taken in Adultery is the most promising and obvious location for instruction on the correct conduct of the sacrament of Penance. Yet again there is a missing leaf, about 58 lines this time, covering the critical moments, the intervention of Jesus and his writing on the ground. The pageant ostensibly takes an individual contravention of one of the Commandments and sees its perpetrator through a process of acknowledgement of the sin, contrition, and forgiveness conditional upon the non-continuance of the sin. The gospel account is prominent in the Lenten liturgy, as we have seen, and the treatment in the York pageant, in keeping with its position as one of the Gospels of the day in Lent, focuses less on the individual sinner than on the episode as a case-history on how to obtain 175

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general pardon. At the end of the pageant, the pardoned woman departs addressing the audience on Christ’s power to forgive sin. 22 Baptism is the most domesticated of the sacraments, the one in which the layperson could be agent as well as patient, licensed to perform baptisms in extremis if an infant were in danger of dying at birth and no priest were on hand. Confession, or, more widely, the whole operation of Penance, is a different type of sacrament, not an occasion but, for the devout, a continuous process of which the receipt of the Sacrament of the Altar was the culmination. The other sacraments are less easily located in the cycle, and there is no instance of, for example, an Ordination. The conventional archetype of the sacrament of Marriage is the first marriage between Adam and Eve, embedded in the marriage rite itself, 23 but we look in vain for any formulation of the sacrament in the words of the Cardmakers’ pageant of The Creation. This is not necessarily to say that it is not there, but it depends heavily on the performative aspect of God’s long speech as he creates Eve for Adam, upon the belief that there are within it triggers for action which suggested to the original producers of the pageant a definite sequence of moves: 24 A female sall þou haue to fere, Her sall I make of þi lyft rybe, Alane so sall þou nough be here Withoutyn faythefull frende and sybe. Takys now here þe gast of lyffe And ressayue both 3oure saules of me; Þis femall take þou to þi wyffe, 21–44 Adam and Eue 3our names sall be. The question arises, then, that if the moment in the action was offered gesturally as a recognisable ritual, how does that affect the audience’s reception of the pageant, and could it be described as somehow cross-referencing the sacrament? Text combined with action undoubtedly has the potential to suggest meanings and allusions not explicit in the spoken text alone. In representations of the sacrament of Marriage in the visual arts, the moment almost always shown is the handfasting, where the priest joins the right hands of the couple, as in the glass at Cartmel Fell described above. In most the bride is to the 22 23

See 76–8 above. York Manual, ‘Ordo ad facienda Sponsalia’, 29: Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui primos parentes nostros Adam et Evam sua virtute creavit suaque benedictione sanctificavit, et in societate amoris copulavit; ipse corda et corpora vestra sanctificet et benedicat, atque in societatem et amorem verae dilectionis conjungat. 24 I am indebted to discussions with Meg Twycross, based on her experience of reconstructive productions of mystery plays, for this section of my argument.

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celebrant’s right, the groom to his left. In others the bride and groom stand side by side to one side of the celebrant. Nichols believes that the model for the pattern is the iconographic representation of the union of Adam and Eve in Eden, 25 but it is necessary to go no further than the rubric of the marriage rite itself which clearly stipulates that the man stands to the right of the woman, the woman to the left of the man. 26 Adam and Eve can be read according to Nichols’ distinctions, as a typological representation of the sacrament of Marriage, along with the espousal of Mary and Joseph, and the account of the marriage of Sarah and Tobias in Tobias 7: 15, but there is no other evidence in the cycle for a typology of the sacraments. The marriage of Adam and Eve was, however, also taken as the origin of the sacrament, and in that respect can be seen as functioning like The Baptism and The Last Supper by uniting the mimetic and anagogical functions of the portrayal. The difference is that here there is no accompanying verbal instruction on the sacrament, nor any echo of its verbal forms. The marriage vows are, however, contextualised in the Armourers’ pageant of The Expulsion (VI):

Eue

Adam Eue

Sethyn it was so me knyth it sore, Bot sethyn that woman witteles ware Mans maistrie shulde haue bene more Agayns þe gilte. Nay, at my speche wolde þou never spare, Þat has vs spilte. Iff I hadde spoken youe oughte to spill Ye shulde haue taken gode tente þeretyll, And turnyd my þought.

135–43

Here Eve argues that if Adam had taken his avowed responsibilities as a husband to exercise maistrie, he could have prevented her accepting the fruit from the serpent; he says she would not have obeyed him anyway. A further possibility for the exploration of the sacrament of Matrimony may have been Pageant XXIIA, The Marriage at Cana, unfortunately never registered. In the Register, a note reports that the pageant began with the archdeclyne (architriclinius, master of ceremonies) saying, ‘Lo this is a yoyful day /For me and …’ The event is referred to in the modern form of the marriage liturgy as the marriage attended by Christ, and the pageant could have included some sort of prefatory enactment of the sacrament, though the episode more commonly illustrates the Sacrament of the Altar for the lay 25 26

Nichols, Seeable Signs, 279. York Manual, 24: Statuantur vir et mulier ante ostium Ecclesiæ coram Deo et Sacerdote et populo, vir a dextris mulieris et mulier a sinistris viri.

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audience, being linked with Epiphany and Baptism as theophanies or manifestations of Christ’s divinity. One other pageant which was also left out of the Register represents, on the face of it, a further possible opportunity for sacramental instruction in the cycle, if we discount the probably problematic connection between Christ and the Doctors (XX) and the sacrament of Confirmation. 27 The material which made up Jesus at the House of Simon the Leper, Pageant XXIIIA, was presumably drawn from Matthew 26: 6–13, where the unnamed woman anoints Christ’s head with precious ointment. In the gospel account, Christ answers the protestations of the disciples by arguing that she was preparing him for burial. His simple argument for the purchase of costly oil to honour those about to die rather than supporting the poor who will always be with us, reads as an opportunity to defend the sacramental offices of the Church over the evangelical. The pageant could, therefore have presented instruction on the sacrament of Extreme Unction, though it would hardly have looked like the classic death-bed scene standard in the iconography of the sacrament. However, on the evidence of the Ordo paginarum, no oil was involved, and Mary Magdalen simply washed Christ’s feet with her tears and dried them with her hair, which represents the common conflation of Matthew’s account with those of Mary of Bethany in John 12 and the unknown weeping sinner in Luke 7. By the time the cycle was in production, the sacrament of Extreme Unction had come in practice frequently to be neglected in favour of viaticum. 28 The importance of death-bed shriving often left little time for the anointing of the dying, and the sacrament of Extreme Unction is, like the Office of the Dead, not well represented in art by any securely standardised iconography. When it is shown, the anointing is applied to various parts of the body, sometimes the feet, breast, head, hand, or the sensory organs. 29 The anointing and burial of Christ, especially the pietà scene and the ensuing Entombment, was sometimes taken as the archetype of the sacrament of Extreme Unction. In these compositions Joseph of Arimathea is shown anointing Christ who lies on a pallet or shroud and

27 28

See 192 below. For example, in the Seven Sacraments glass at Doddiscombsleigh, illustrated in Tasker, Encyclopaedia, 196, the priest at the deathbed is clearly administering the Mass wafer, not anointing the dying man at all. This is also the case in the Cartmel Fell glass, mentioned above. 29 Tasker, Encyclopaedia, 198, shows a carving from Gresham in Norfolk where the priest anoints the dying man’s feet under the bedclothes, and on the bed there is a dish on which four wisps of wool are arranged in the form of a cross. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, plate 116, shows the font from Badingham, Suffolk, where the priest is anointing the dying man’s forehead.

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Mary Magdalen is often present here too, at his feet. 30 Again this moment is seen not as a type of unction but as the origin of the sacrament. Christ’s burial was part of the continuum of the redemptive act and therefore sacramental by association, as the rituals for Good Friday and Easter Sunday explored above demonstrate. 31 In the Butchers’ pageant, The Death of Christ (XXXVI), the Virgin has already been led away by Mary Cleophas and John before the body is taken down, so there is no opportunity for a pietà scene. Instead the focus swiftly shifts to Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea who are left alone to perform the rites for the body when they have persuaded Pilate to part with it. Nicodemus promises to ‘dresse him with dedis full dewe’ and Joseph produces a winding sheet. Nicodemus then says: Seere oynementis here haue I Brought for þis faire body, I anoynte þe forthy With myrre and aloes.

400–3

Joseph responds: Þis dede it is done ilke a dele And wroughte is þis werke wele iwis.

404–5

But, as with the Sacrament of the Altar, references to the sacrament of Extreme Unction seem to occur in a number of other places. The culmination of Christ’s life is to be his death on the Cross, so verbal and visual resonances of the sacrament associated with bodily death are spread throughout the cycle in a number of scenes, from the Magus bearing myrrh, probably in a chrism, who says: But whan thy dedys ar done to dye is þi dette And sen thy body beryed shal be, This mirre will I giffe to þi grauyng Goldsmiths, XVI: 340–2

through the anointing by Mary Magdalen at the house of Simon the Leper, to the later scene in the Winedrawers’ Hortulanus (XXXIX) where the Magdalen meets the risen Christ walking in the garden to 30 Most commonly found in sequences of manuscript miniatures illustrating scenes from the life of Christ, for example in the late fifteenth-century Book of Hours of Sarum Use, Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 56, fol. 46: Kathleen Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, 2 vols (A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 6; London: Harvey Miller, 1996), vol. 1, plate 452; vol. 2, cat. 123. Here Joseph of Arimathea is anointing the dead Christ’s legs while the grieving Virgin, Mary Cleophas, Mary Salome, and Nicodemus look on on one side of the bier, and Mary Magdalen kneels with another ointment pot next to her on the ground on the other side. Joseph of Arimathea is also shown anointing the dead Christ in the glass in Canterbury Cathedral (Tasker, Encyclopaedia, 65). 31 See 155–7 above.

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which she has come, according to standard iconography, bearing another chrism of oil. The relationship between the York Cycle and the ecclesiastical culture from which it emanated is probably no more clearly illuminated that in pageants which have to confront the representation of a historical event which is also the originator of one of the sacraments of the Church. What we have seen is how different dramatists handle these moments differently but always in a manner which mediates between the historical and the perpetual or mystical meaning of the event. Although there is no clear project in the cycle to treat the sacraments systematically, nor any consistent emphasis on them, where they do occur the audience is treated to rather more direct address than is general in York. This is unsurprising, since the occasion of the whole production is the celebration of the Sacrament of the Altar.

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… or Feast of Fools In the York Cycle as it survives in the Register, biblical and liturgical text is rewritten for performance in rhymed English verse. The material from which it is shaped remains, as we have seen, demonstrably theologically orthodox, although it may imaginatively embellish the causal patterns of its narrative sources. Its orthodoxy derives from the material of worship, liturgy, and preaching by which sacred text and commentary were mediated for the whole community of believers. The clerics who wrote the pageants can, however, also be seen drawing on other fields of experience to convey how and why events happened in the way they did. The title of this final section acknowledges those other sources and, in particular, the potential there was in the writing and especially in the performing of the pageants for subverting their inherent orthodoxy. 1 In looking at this area finally we put the politics, especially the ecclesiastical politics, of fifteenth-century York, back in the centre of the stage. The authors of the cycle were educated in scholastic habits of thought which treat the relationship between God and man as bound by a causal pattern of rights and duties from which the principles of canon law were derived. The problem of authority within a fixed hierarchy trickling down from God to man via established social structures is one of the major preoccupations in much of the literature of post-Black-Death England, including notably Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tales. The crises of 1381 in particular had shown how much those stabilities could be threatened by labour shortage, social mobility, and the growth of an urban middle class whose wealth was not held as land. The flourishing community responsible for the production of the York Cycle was a product of these very social changes. Aspects of the cycle can be read as covertly reasserting the old order: there is an overarching logic in which the different dramatists of the pageants dealing with the subjects of the Fall, the Temptation in the 1 On the Feast of Fools, see E.K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903), vol. 1, 274–335; Twycross and Carpenter, Masks and Masking, 39–46. Bakhtin’s influential view of carnival as a subversive opposition to a repressive official culture is articulated in Rabelais and his World, trans. Helène Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).

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Wilderness, Pilate’s wife’s dream, the Harrowing of Hell, and the Last Judgement, demonstrate that man’s relationship with God is controlled according to juridical principles. This supplies the intellectual rationale for the incorporation into the cycle of the usefully spectacular scenes which recount the history of the Devil, 2 a subject given little prominence in the annual round of worship except as admonitory material in preaching. There are moreover individual pageants, particularly in the Passion sequence, which invite reflection on the politics of official order, as feudal overlords overreach themselves by attempting to try and sentence God; and there are points throughout the cycle where God or Christ is involved in administering divine justice while demonstrating its inscrutability. St Thomas Aquinas warns that man can pass judgement on external actions only; God alone can judge the inner movements of the will. 3 The broad contrast between the mores of the Old and the New Laws is played out in the cycle through Christ’s continuing opposition to the Jewish scribes and Pharisees, as a boy before the Doctors in the Temple, and in the episode of the Woman Taken in Adultery, when he rebukes the Jewish judges (John 8: 15), ‘You judge according to the flesh; I judge not any man’. The circumstances of performance, however, considerably complicate our understanding of how these messages might have been received by the original audience of the cycle. All theatrical scripts are ephemeral, and the York pageants remain particularly textually unstable because they are captured at a point in their history which is, with hindsight, provisional. The texts that survive are for the modern reader chance survivals. But equally, for the period in which it was written, the Register is an aspirational project, instigated by those in authority who sought to control the cycle, 4 but a project which was itself never truly completed. Added to that are the circumstances of production in which local people impersonated biblical characters whose rank and status was analogised with contemporary authority figures 5 – Annas and Caiaphas referred to as ‘bishops’ for example. Indeed all the figures ranged against Christ and his disciples are referred to, and possibly dressed as, members of the contemporary ecclesiastical and legal establishments, while the person of Christ and the events which 2

See 69, note 5 above, and David Wee, ‘The Temptation of Christ and the Motif of Divine Duplicity in the Corpus Christi Cycle Drama’, Modern Philology 72 (1974), 1–16. 3 St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae ed. and trans. Thomas Gilby and others, 61 vols (London: Blackfriars with Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964–1981), vol. 28, Law and Political Theory, ed. and trans. Thomas Gilby (1966), 30–1, quaestio 91, article 4; see also 134–5, quaestio 96, article 5. Online version (1920 edition): http://www.newadvent.org/summa/209104.htm and /209605.htm. 4 Twycross, ‘Forget the 4.30 a.m. start’, at 107–110, and 142. 5 Horner, ‘“Us must make lies”’, especially 47–67.

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originated the sacraments of the Church are enacted by the laity. To consider the occasion of individual performance is to perceive how the cycle might offer numerous opportunities for subversion and ironic presentation. Equally it could offer comfort and affirmation that commercial life could be incorporated in the project of salvation. In other words, the nature of the cycle as it has been handed down reveals rather more than the interesting intellectual furniture of its probable authors; it is the product of a rich and complex cultural and ecclesiastical environment, an environment that was particularly politically charged in the early fifteenth century. It supplied an opportunity for encoding aspects of local consensus and conflict, as well as affirming conformity with current ecclesiastical reform. The business of this final chapter is, therefore, not simply to identify where the non-liturgical materials in the cycle were drawn from and how they were deployed, a project that has been thoroughly undertaken in the past. 6 Rather the cycle will be returned to its specific ecclesiastical and civic context for an exploration of how it used some readily identifiable reference points to develop specific meanings for the communities involved in the project of its annual production.

6 Most notably by Rosemary Woolf, whose English Mystery Plays remains the single most comprehensive guide to the playwrights’ patristic sources. 

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Chapter 8

Feast of Fools? The civic and ecclesiastical communities of medieval York have been widely studied, but it is perhaps worth reviewing here the make-up of the ecclesiastical capital of the North. In addition to its Minster, sixtyodd parish churches, and small guild chapels such as the one dedicated to St Anne on Foss Bridge, medieval York hosted a number of houses of the endowed and mendicant religious. Just outside the walls was the huge Benedictine Abbey of St Mary. Benedictines also lived in Holy Trinity Priory in Micklegate, an alien dependency of Marmoutier near Tours. There was a small house of Benedictine nuns at St Clements and a house of Gilbertine canons at St Andrew’s. Of the hospitals, St Leonard’s was of considerable size and there was also a leper house, St Nicholas, just outside Walmgate Bar. Beyond this there were around thirty small endowed maisons dieu. For the mendicant orders there was a Franciscan friary near the castle, a house of Dominicans at Les Toftes, a Carmelite priory at Hungate, and a house of Austin Friars in the city centre. 1 Considering how many established religious houses there were in York, one is forced to conclude with Maud Sellers that ‘the rarity of allusions [in the civic records] to those who held office or dwelt in them is remarkable’. 2 It is almost as difficult to establish how the thriving commercial sector in the city regarded its clerical neighbours. As we saw in Chapter 1 above, there is a very good survival rate for the wills of men in the aldermanic class during the period when the cycle was first evolving. 3 Just as it was interesting to see them following devotional fashions such as making various bequests with a sacramental focus, what is also remarkable about them is how little they leave to the 1 T.M. Fallow and others ‘Religious Houses’ in The Victoria History of the County of York, 3 vols (The Victoria History of the Counties of England; London: Archibald

Constable, St Catherine Press, 1907–1925) vol. 3, 106–7 (St Mary’s Abbey), 283–96 (friars), 336–52 (hospitals), 375–86 (collegiate churches), 389–91 (Holy Trinity Priory). Holy Trinity Priory was naturalised in 1426 (389). 2 York Memorandum Book, ed. Sellers, vol. 2, lxvii. 3 University of York, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research: York District Probate Register (1389–1514). From the 34 mayors in office 1380–1430, 21 wills survive. The following analysis of the religious bequests of York mayors draws on work done a number of years ago under the tutelage of R.B. Dobson, one of the foremost historians of medieval York, and has been published as ‘The York Plays in Performance: Civitas versus Templum’, Medieval English Theatre 24 (2005), 84–97.

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religious institutions with whom they lived cheek by jowl. The vast majority make charitable bequests, as is conventional for the good of the soul and its passage through purgatory, to the poor of the city and/or to prisoners, and for the mending of roads and bridges. Elsewhere I have speculated that this sort of bequest from wealthy members of the aldermanic group develops according to the model set for lay piety in catechetical works such as the Corporal Works of Mercy derived from Matthew 25 and made the focus of the York Mercers’ Last Judgement pageant. 4 Bequests to the friars are not uncommon, but amount to very trivial sums of money cursorily included, possibly on the advice of the clerk drawing up the will. Those with stronger pious sentiment, or more money to dispose of, tend to concentrate on their parish church. This is not surprising, given the occupational organisation of the medieval city. The parish church functioned both as the focus of worship for close-knit members of family and occupation, and, on the evidence of the York-generated Lay Folks’ Catechism, the provider of basic education for future generations of lay trades and craftsmen. 5 Three of the wealthier mayors in the period leave money to their parish churches but then go on to leave even more for the foundation of a chantry for themselves in the Minster, where they seek burial. Others leave money to individual family members who are in holy orders, including friars, but not to the religious houses in question. Only four mayors clearly gave some thought to the religious houses which will receive special bequests, and the omissions and inclusions are interesting. The only mayor to demonstrate comprehensive charity to organised religion without any accompanying overt request for Masses belongs to a previous age. John de Gysburne, mayor in 1380 for the third time, leaves a substantial 100s to St Mary’s Abbey amongst a formidable array of bequests to religious houses all over the North of England. 6 Moving into the fifteenth century, John de Northby, mayor in 1416, the year after the compilation of the Ordo paginarum, also makes a number of religious bequests, but they are differently formulated. He shows primary concern for his parish church, for maisons dieu, lepers, and the York friars. He then goes on to leave further bequests to Mount Grace,

4 5 6

King, ‘York Plays, Urban Piety, and the Case of Nicholas Blackburn’. The Lay Folks’ Catechism, ed. Simmons and Nolloth. Published in Cook, Some Early Civic Wills of York, 1: 2–7, see especially 2–5. Each house of friars in York receives £20, and there are bequests of 40s to various orders in Scarborough, Yarm, Allerton, Beverley, Hull, Doncaster, Tickhill, and Carlisle. 18s goes to the nuns of St Clements, and to eighteen other houses of nuns in the North. There are further bequests to St Mary’s Gisburne, Jervaux Abbey, Kirkham, Meaux, Selby, and Bridlington. The hospital of St Leonard’s, lepers, anchorites, and maisons dieu in York and environs are all also beneficiaries.

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Watton, Kirkham, and to the nuns of St Clements, but these are all tied to chantry obligations. 7 Richard Russell, mayor in 1421 and 1430, was another very wealthy man whose first thought was for the refurbishment of his parish church, St John the Baptist, Hungate, where he even names his chosen workmen. 8 He leaves every individual in St Leonard’s Hospital five marks, then makes bequests to religious houses which are usefully glossed with reasons: ten marks to Durham Priory for help in his youth, his daughter’s dowry to St Nicholas’s Hospital should she choose to become a nun there. All major houses in York receive bequests, as do several Yorkshire monasteries, making St Mary’s Abbey conspicuous by its absence. Thomas Bracebridge, mayor in 1424, also left a will which is both wide-ranging and nit-picking in its range of religious bequests, most framed in terms of the purchase of Masses for his soul. 9 Each York friary receives from him a bequest for its fabric as well as a per capita sum for each friar. He also leaves money to nunneries, naming individual prioresses. Taking the larger group of early fifteenth-century York mayors, a couple of things stand out. The number of bequests to maisons dieu, as opposed to St Leonard’s, the major hospital foundation in the city, is notable, as are the bequests to the new foundation at Mount Grace, more favoured than York’s own St Mary’s. This gives us a reasonable point of departure. St Mary’s was the largest Benedictine house in the North throughout the Middle Ages, yet wealthy citizens signally did not choose to leave money to the great monastery on their doorstep, preferring to bequeath to houses further afield. Relations between Abbey and City were not good, as their separation by fortified walls on both parts illustrates. The latter part of the fourteenth century inherited a legacy of recorded and reasonably constant dispute between City and Abbey. The citizens complained that the abbot usurped the power of the city government, specifically objecting to the Abbey’s claim of jurisdiction over Bootham and the revenues from Bootham market. In 1354 Edward III had attempted to resolve the issue by determining that Marygate belonged to the monks, Bootham to the City. 10 But things rumbled on, because Marygate was the route from the Ouse to Bootham, and in 1377 the A/Y Memorandum Book records a dispute over the seizing of a ship’s ‘rother’ by the bursar of the Abbey. 11 Moreover, not only did Abbey and City obstruct one another wherever possible, the civic authorities must have been aware of various sharp practices of which the Abbey was accused, as when, for example, the 7 8 9 10 11

Published in Cook, Some Early Civic Wills of York, 4: 14–23. Published in Cook, Some Early Civic Wills of York, 7: 2–9, at 2. Published in Cook, Some Early Civic Wills of York, 5: 7–16. Francis Drake, Eboracum (London: [W. Bowyer? for the author], 1736), 581. York Memorandum Book, ed. Sellers, vol. 1, 27.

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Patent Rolls for 27 October 1406 record the seizure of a plot of land from the Abbey, endowed as the site of a chapel, but actually rented out to a layman for keeping pigs. 12 The case of St Leonard’s Hospital is comparable: despite its fundamentally charitable function, it again received very few bequests. Again there is a history of disputes with the City. Petercorn, the hospital’s entitlement to one thrave of corn from every plough ploughing in the counties of Yorkshire, Westmorland, Lancashire, and Cumberland, and one of its principal sources of revenue, was unpopular and proved hard to enforce. 13 The hospital was also in dispute with the City over territory, having to be granted special protection in 1380 and 1381 against incursions by angry citizens. 14 In all these instances, York mayors and aldermen are named on the commissions appointed to settle matters. 15 The A/Y Memorandum Book records that in 1401 the hospital aroused popular protest by annexing some common pasture at Tylmyre, and this time the mayor simply sent a man to pull down the fence and fill the ditch. 16 The same mayor, William Frost, had been appointed in November 1399 to join a commission to inquire into what the Patent Rolls refer to as ‘the dissipation of its lands, goods and possessions and the burden of excessive pensions, maintenances and corrodies …’ 17 This seems to have followed a succession of corrupt masters who had left the hospital with debts of over £500. Any corruption, or even just bad book-keeping, would again be known to the aldermanic class within the city, so it is unsurprising if they preferred to entrust their own posthumous almsgiving to small independent maisons dieu. The mendicant orders too had their disputes with the city government. There is, for example, the celebrated ordinance of 1371 which attempted to settle the long-running dispute between the Friars Minors and the butchers in Shambles who customarily threw offal into the Ouse just upstream of the friary. 18 Most tensions arose, however,

Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry IV, Volume 3: 1405–08, 249. See for example, Calendar of Patent Rolls: Richard II, 1377–81, 465; Calendar of Patent Rolls: Richard II, 1381–85, 137; Calendar of Patent Rolls: Henry V, 1413–16, 111, and others. 14 Calendar of Patent Rolls: Richard II, 1377–81, 488; Calendar of Patent Rolls: Richard II, 1381–85, 137. 15 For example, the commission set up in 1381 included Simon de Quixley, Thomas Graa, and Robert Sauvage, who were appointed to ‘compel the persons who in late tumult broke the closes walls and doors of the hospital of St Leonard’s, York … to repair the same before midsummer’. 16 York Memorandum Book, ed. Sellers, vol. 1, 179–80. 17 Calendar of Patent Rolls: Henry IV, 1399–1400, 131. 18 Escheators’ Accounts Enrolled, E357, no. 3, m. 46d, quoted in A.G. Little, ‘A Royal Enquiry into Property held by the Mendicant Friars in England’ in Franciscan Papers, Lists, and Documents (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1943), 12 13

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over the right of sanctuary, coming to a head in 1391 when the Memorandum Book records that the king had to confirm the city government’s power to seize debtors from within the friaries’ precincts. 19 Yet despite the customary tensions which had grown up around any independent enclosures within the city’s limits, we know that the friars contributed significantly to civic life, not least as preachers, educators, and book-owners. 20 Friars appear time and again in secular contexts, as for example executors of wills and as members of religious confraternities like the Corpus Christi guild. 21 And it was the Minorite, William de Melton, also a campaigner for the regulation of prostitution in the city, who in 1426 suggested that the mystery plays and the Corpus Christi procession be moved to consecutive days. 22 The relationship between City and Minster is another area for exploration. Three mayors between 1380 and 1430 chose burial in the Minster. 23 This was clearly a sign of social status. The denizens of the Minster made up another sector of the population of medieval York. Much of the evidence is that they operated as another distinct coterie, acting as one another’s executors and choosing burial side by side, though perhaps relating, as their wills demonstrate, to their places of origin which were widely spread across the country. 24 As the home of an archiepiscopal see, York was also home to wealthy and learned clergy who were off-comers, not indigenous to the city in any true sense, and who may have arrived there via lesser ecclesiastical appointments elsewhere in the country, or from Oxford and Cambridge, as relatively mature adults. This is not to say that the wealthy laity were untravelled provincials: many were accustomed to travelling to and fro on business from Hull to the Low Countries, but the majority of freemen of the City were at least second-generation York citizens and likely to have been born in the city. 25 144–55. The ordinance in question requires quod carnifices non jacent feces inter pontem et Fratres Minores: York Memorandum Book, ed. Sellers, vol. 1, 15. 19 York Memorandum Book, ed. Sellers, vol. 2, 27.

20 The catalogue of the library of the Austin Friars is well known, published in M.R. James as ‘The Catalogue of the Library of the Augustinian Friars at York, now first edited from the manuscript at Trinity College, Dublin‘ in Fasciculus Ioanni Willis Clark dicatus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909), 2–96, and two notable scholar friars lived there, John Ergholme and John Waldeby. In 1429, John Bate, writer and Greek scholar, was prior of the Carmelites. In this context, Mayor Robert Sauvage’s bequest to his son Fr. Thomas Sauvage, to see him through Oxford University, is unsurprising: Testamenta Eboracensia Part 1, Surtees Society Publications 4 (1836), 157. 21 For membership lists see Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi, ed. Skaife. 22 Fallow, ‘Religious Houses’, 289; REED: York, 42–4. 23 William de Selby, John de Craven, Nicholas Blackburn Senior. 24 For the nature and habits of the Minster clergy, see R.B. Dobson, ‘The Residentiary Canons of York in the Fifteenth Century’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 30 (1979), 145–74. 25 See Meg Twycross, ‘Some Aliens in York’, 359–80.

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Internal conflict pales into insignificance, however, when compared with the moment of political and ecclesiastical crisis in which the solidarity of City and Minster is evident. In 1405, the City, laity and clergy, supported its own Archbishop, Richard Scrope, in his rebellion against Henry IV. Scrope failed to secure the protection of benefit of clergy, which caused general scandal, particularly among York’s merchant élite whose support he had won by attacking Henry IV’s record of excessive government. John Capgrave’s near-contemporary partisan account demonstrates just how closely Scrope’s rebellion was connected politically to the interests of the mercantile community: Thei [Scrope, the Earl of Mowbray, and the Earl of Northumberland] cleped onto hem þe cité of 3ork and mech of þe cuntré, and set up certeyn articles in cherch-dores, expressing what was her entent: First þei desired þat þe puple of þe reme schuld haue fre elleccion of knytes of þe parlement aftir þe eld forme; the secunde, þat þer schuld be a remedie ageyns fals suggestiones, be which many men were disherid of her londis; the þirde, þat þere schuld be ordeyned a remedye ageyn þese greuous taskes, and ageyne þe grete extorciones, and eke oppressing of marchauntis. 26

The Latin chronicles of York assembled by James Raine for the Rolls Series then give the best detail of the difficulties the royal party suffered thereafter in trying to secure a capital judgement on the Archbishop: Henry IV, king of England, in a chamber of the said archbishop’s manor, called Bishopthorp near York, gave instructions to Sir William Gascoigne, then Chief Justice of England, so that a death sentence could be pronounced on the said archbishop as traitor to the king. Gascoigne was reluctant to do this, replying: ‘Neither you, your Royal Highness, nor any of your lieges in your name, have the lawful power according to the justice of royal authority to judge any bishop to death.’ Accordingly he emphatically refused to judge the John Capgrave, Abbreuiacion of Cronicles, ed. Peter Lucas, EETS OS 285 (1983), 227: They summoned [to their support] the City of York and a great part of the region, and displayed a list of demands on church doors as their manifesto: First, they wished the people of the realm to have free election of knights of the shire to parliament after the traditional fashion; second, that there should be a [legal] remedy against false claims [starting vexatious lawsuits], through which many men were disinherited of their estates; third, that there should be a legal remedy promulgated against the current heavy taxes and impositions, and against the large-scale expropriations, and also the victimisation of merchants. I am grateful to Meg Twycross and Olga Horner for their help in assembling details of the Scrope case. Thanks also to Andrew Prescott and Hannes Kleineke for their elucidation of Scrope’s claims. 26

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archbishop. Whereupon the king completely lost his temper with the judge, whose memory be blessed forever more, and immediately he ordered Sir William Fulthorp, a knight but no judge, that, that very day, namely the Tuesday in the week following Pentecost, the eighth of June, he should pronounce a sentence of death on the archbishop as a traitor, in the hall of the aforesaid manor. And since the same William Gascoigne, Chief Justice of England, completely refused, the said Sir William Fulthorp sat in place of the judge and ordered the archbishop to be brought. He pronounced the following sentence on the archbishop, the same standing bareheaded in his presence, listening, and for all standing around: ‘You, Richard, traitor to the king, we judge to death and order to be beheaded according to the king’s command’. 27

Scrope’s body, interred in York Minster, became the focus of a campaign to have the Archbishop canonised which united the influential men of the city with the Minster clergy. Several accounts relate how, after the Archbishop’s defeat, the citizens of York had to make strenuous efforts to make their peace with the King, including

The Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops, ed. James Raine, 3 vols (Rolls Series 71, 71B, 71C; London, Longman, 1879–1894), vol. 2 (Rolls Series 71B; 1886), 306. Henricus enim Quartus, rex Angliæ, in camera manerii dicti archiepiscopi, quod vocatur Bishopsthorp juxta Eboracum, mandavit Willelmo Gascoyne armigero, adtunc justitiario principali Angliæ, ut sententiam mortis de præfato archiepiscopo proferret tanquam de proditore regis; qui hoc recusavit, et sic sibi respondit: ‘Nec vos, domine mi rex, nec aliquis nomine vestro vester ligeus, potestis licite secundum jura regni aliquem episcopum ad mortem judicare.’ Unde præfatum archiepiscopum judicare omnino renuit. Quare idem rex ira vehementi exarsit versus eundem judicem, cujus memoria sit in benedictionem in sæcula sæculi. Et statim mandavit domino Willelmo Fulthorp, militi et non judici, ut eodem die, scilicet feria secunda hebdomadis Pentecostes, qui fuit dies octavus mensis Junii, sententiam mortis in aula præfati manerii in archiepiscopum, quem vocavit proditorem, proferret. Et cum prædictus Willelmus Gascoyne, judex principalis Angliæ, omnino renuit, prædictus dominus Willelmus Fulthorp in loco judicis sedit, et archiepiscopum adduci præceperat. Quo archiepiscopo coram ipso nudo capite stante, hanc sententiam, ipso audiente et omnibus circumstantibus, protulit: ‘Te, Ricardum, proditorem regis, ad mortem judicamus, et ex præcepto regis decollari mandamus.’ For accounts of the Scrope rebellion and/or the ‘martyrdom’ of Scrope, see Historians of the Church of York, vol. 2 (Rolls Series 71B; 1886), 306–10; 431–3; vol. 3 (Rolls Series 71C; 1894), 288–91; Thomas Walsingham, Historia Anglicana in Chronica Monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. Henry Thomas Riley, 12 vols (Rolls Series 28; 1863–1876), vol. 2 (Rolls Series 28B, 1864), 268–71, and Johannes de Trokelow and Henricus de Blanforde, Chronica et annales in Chronica Monasterii Sancti Albani, vol. 4 (Rolls Series 28D, 1866), 403–11. 27

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coming out to meet him barefoot and, in Capgrave’s version, with halters around their necks. 28 The local sensitivity of the political context of these events is clear. 29 Scrope’s rebellion may have come at a point when the Lancastrian succession’s bid for legitimacy was fragile, but its impact in York was to last as long as the Lancastrian dynasty itself. Scrope had been condemned despite the pleadings of Archbishop Arundel, and the refusal of Gascoigne, Chief Justice of England, to try the case. The royal pardon of August 1405 to the City of York for its part in the rebellion may have been extended to members of the crafts and trades of the city. 30 Those whose sympathies Scrope courted in the city were precisely those who would have been intimately involved in the production of the mystery plays and who would have had lay association with the Minster, possibly through their membership of the big religious confraternities of St George and St Christopher. The York in which the mystery play cycle evolved was, therefore, a highly ecclesiastically politicised one. And Corpus Christi, like all festive occasions, was a time of particular potential for tension. On the day itself there were three separate processions, all working to different timetables. The monks of St Mary’s processed within the Abbey precincts; the Minster clergy also had a procession around their precincts; and the civic procession for the secular clergy and laity of the parish churches and the City fathers began at Holy Trinity Priory, going as far as the Minster, but probably not into its precinct, finally depositing the Host at St Leonard’s. 31 The first we know in detail of the sequence of pageants which accompanied the lay procession comes from the 1415 Ordo paginarum. 32 The Ordo is itself a complex document, because a number of the items on the list show signs of having been amended. From this evidence, it seems likely that the cycle emerged from the procession gradually, and that at the turn of the century we may not be looking at fully-fledged dramatic performance on stationary wagons, but at simpler speaking tableaux vivants. 33 Certainly evidence from European examples shows biblical episodes in religious processions being represented by groups of walking figures carrying 28 For the self-humiliation of the citizens, see Capgrave, Abbreuiacion, 229, who mentions the halters; Historians of the Church of York, vol. 3, 290, which has the mayor and citizens quasi nudos cum cordulis in manibus ante regem in præsentia archiepiscopi prostraverunt juxta muros Eboraci; and Chronica Monasterii Sancti Albani, vol. 4, 408. 29 Historians of the Church of York, vol. 3, 291–2. 30 The reference to the detail of the pardon is given in E.F. Jacob, The Fifteenth Century, 1399–1485 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978 reprint of 1961 edition), 58–62, but the source of this information is unclear. 31 Douglas Cowling, ‘The Liturgical Celebration of Corpus Christi in Medieval York’, REED Newsletter (1976) part 2, 5–9. 32 REED: York, 21. 33 Twycross, ‘The Ordo paginarum revisited’.

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attributes and wearing labels round their necks, as tableaux of statues, and as tableaux vivants both speaking and non-speaking. 34 Without pursuing those lines of argument here, we can acknowledge the difference between the cycle at the time of the Ordo and the shape it took at the time of the Register, and look for clues about representations of the Church in both to determine whether the cycle reflects any of the political turbulences of the times through which it evolved. The cycle demonstrates deference for some clerical educators, doctores, but is also prepared to poke fun at them. In a c.1430 addition to the Ordo, and in the Register, a learned Doctor is provided to bridge the gap between Old and New Testament by introducing the prophecies of the Nativity to the audience just before the Annunciation. In the pageant of Christ and the Doctors in the Register the ‘Doctors’ don’t know their Decalogue. 35 The way in which this episode is constructed, and the fact that it is common to the York, Towneley, Chester, and Coventry cycles, suggests that it was embedded in the Doctors’ pageant from the start, and that it clearly and playfully subverts the whole matter of catechesis of the laity by the clergy. 36 The pageant presents a scene in which the equivalent of, for example, a guild apprentice is catechised by the clerical establishment; in this instance the illiterate boy (194) turns out to know more than the professionals. What the child impresses the priests with is not arcane theology, but is something which all boys of his age and class were expected to know. The Doctors here may have been dressed to represent the organised Church which is, in performance, comically undermined by a young York catechumen. It seems likely here that the ‘Doctors’ would have been presented as just that, particularly given that their role is didactic. How the chief Scribes and Pharisees were represented in the trial scenes, when the adult Christ comes into opposition with organised religion, may have differed. Annas and Caiaphas are simply mentioned by name in the Ordo, but in the Bowyers and Fletchers’ play in the Register, Christ before Annas and Caiaphas, they refer to themselves as prelates, and as learned in the law, and are referred to as bishops. 37 What they wore seems critical to the effect of their presentation. It seems unlikely, however, that they appeared as exotic eastern figures in the early life of the cycle, only to turn into ‘bishops’ when the, probably later, alliterative-verse pageant was written. On the other hand, there are 34

See for example the procession of the Holy Blood in Bruges. Although this is a late development, the mechanics of the present-day procession demonstrate the feasibility of performing spoken text from a moving wagon. In Valencia’s Corpus Christi procession, by contrast, biblical history is represented entirely by processing figures wearing or carrying attributes. 35 Pageant XX, The Spurriers and Lorimers. 36 See 38–41 above. 37 Pageant XXIX: 336; 4–9, 14–16; and 327.

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numerous visual representations of them in headgear which would have singled them out as exotic. Whatever the precise visual codes, the confrontation between the by now adult artisan Christ and two representatives of ecclesiastical authority, that leaves the latter bemused, again contains potential for anti-clerical humour. The cycle, therefore, may in performance have situated the institutionalised Church as the butt of parody, as churchmen are wrong-footed by the people’s Christ and his followers. Again, when the infant Christ is received in the Temple by Simeon, it appears that Simeon is receiving rather than conferring sacramental benefit. 38 His speech replicates a liturgical process associated with communion, moving through greeting and receiving to offering thanks. Interestingly, the Ordo tells us that this episode was originally taken on by St Leonard’s Hospital, so there is a possibility that Simeon was played by a cleric. It is not so much the portrayal of churchmen per se that affords the opportunity for subversion, but their juxtaposition with the figure of Christ. There is no indication that in York the succession of people who must have taken on the role of the Christ had to be in holy orders. 39 The effect of a layman both being, and enacting the institution of, the Sacrament of the Altar is particularly complex, for, although the Ordo is not a reliable source on how the Last Supper was originally presented, the core of the action must have been there. 40 The evidence is, then, intriguingly inconclusive. In a city of some institutional rivalry between the economic and the ecclesiastical domains and power structures, the cycle of pageants probably written by clerics held the potential for subversion in performance, but that potential could, and can, be either realised or equally refused in performance. From the authoring to the performance of the Corpus Christi cycle there was a transdiscursive shift from the ecclesiastical to the economic domain. Nor did this create a simple liminality in which the cycle is poised between official ecclesiastical culture and urban mercantile culture, because the two cultures themselves interpenetrated one another in the setting of the parish church or religious 38 Pageant XVII, latterly attributed to the Labourers (and possibly the Hatmakers), a late addition to the Register, inserted out of sequence some time after 1567. The pageant passed to the Masons before 1477 to ensure its regular performance. The Ordo description of the episode includes a midwife and two sons of Simeon. 39 In the present day the Misteri of the Assumption of the Virgin in Elx (near Alicante, Spain), possibly the only surviving medieval biblical play for which there is a virtually unbroken tradition of local performance, both Christ and St Peter must be played by ordained priests. See Pamela M. King, ‘La Festa d’Elx: The Festival of the Assumption of the Virgin, Elche (Alicante)’, Medieval English Theatre 8:1 (1986), 21–50. 40 My thanks to Meg Twycross, who is engaged in a study of the alterations to the Ordo, for verifying this.

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confraternity. For example, bequests to religious houses were often motivated, tensions between groups notwithstanding, by the individual’s having a family member in religious orders. And despite other evidence of persistent town-and-gown tensions, York’s citizenry came out in favour of ‘their’ Archbishop when he was threatened from the outside. The Scrope cause cast such a long shadow that there were still attempts to have him canonised in the 1450s, and York’s relationship with the Lancastrian dynasty was to remain forever uneasy. Tensions between the City and its Church were on the whole contained or resolved. The true area of conflict lay not there but between the City in its entirety and the Crown. This, rather than local tensions, is what is encoded in a number of pageants in the cycle which mediate and understand their narrative material through contemporary constitutional and legal uses and abuses. The author of the plays which deal with the trials before Annas and Caiaphas, before Pilate, Herod, then Pilate again, is the problematically designated ‘York Realist’. 41 His technique is not full ‘realism’, but he appears to mobilise a selection of contemporary forms and practices drawn from the law to extrapolate particular meanings from his narrative material. His transaction with his audience appears, moreover, to assume a consensual understanding of, and attitude to, contemporary legal procedures. The pageants expose the wrangling for jurisdiction amongst law-givers from different power-bases, a wrangling which actually impedes the cause of dealing with a transgressor. The action also exposes them as politically preoccupied and motivated by protecting their own backs. This dramatist both recognises that the process of litigation has a number of rhetorical properties which lend themselves to dramatisation, and that it is an effective vehicle for exposing how discrete groups operate to gain, assert, and protect political power and factional advantage. Legal procedures are, of course, notoriously inadequate for dealing with anything paranormal, 42 so in such circumstances the construction of accusation, evidence, and verdict come to be exposed as corrupt manipulations of natural law. So when Annas and Caiaphas accuse Christ of witchcraft, what follows exposes the limitations of the empirical methods of contemporary legal procedures. Like Satan in the Smiths’ play of The Temptation (XXII), Annas and Caiaphas fail to identify the accused as lying outside their jurisdiction. 41 Robinson, ‘Art of the York Realist’. A fuller version of the following discussion of these plays is published as Pamela M. King, ‘Contemporary Cultural Models for the Trial Plays in the York Cycle’ in Drama and Community: People and Plays in Medieval Europe, ed. Alan Hindley (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 200–16. 42 The inadequacy of the law for dealing with manifestations of the ‘paranormal’ became the major point at issue in later witchcraft trials, as Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible eloquently came to illustrate.

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In one ironical exchange in Christ before Pilate I (XXX: 502–4) they conclude that Christ could not have learned his tricks from his father, as he was ‘but a write’ (wright, carpenter), a clear case of mistaken identity. Effective stage business, as later in the Tilemakers’ Christ before Pilate 2: The Judgement (XXXIII: 168–9, 274–7) when court officials twice involuntarily reverence Christ, is used to show, as Aquinas says, that men are not subject to human law if they are under higher authority: in particular spiritual men are not subject to laws that are inconsistent with the guidance of the Holy Ghost. 43 This dramatist exploits Christ’s special relationship with the law, as bringer of the New Law which transforms the contract between God and humankind, for many local ironies. This is characteristic of his use of incidental concrete detail to illuminate broader doctrinal patterns, but may also be read as a covert commentary on the Scrope trial. The boasting speeches of the rival temporal powers are used to assert differing power bases. Caiaphas is a ‘lorde lerned lelly in youre lay’ (XXIX: 4), while Pilate is concerned to establish his earthly aristocratic lineage as son of Caesar as his power base (Tapiters and Couchers, Christ before Pilate 1: The Dream of Pilate’s Wife, XXX: 10–15). Herod is then presented as a despotic tyrant who maintains his will simply by force, threatening to ‘choppe þam in cheynes’ (Litsters, Christ before Herod, XXXI: 17). Throughout the sequence earthly power is physically asserted and protected by physical sanction, as the violence of the buffeting scenes which punctuate the action demonstrates. Moreover the tension and immediacy of events in the trial sequence depend on suggested analogies to different types of legal proceedings which we must assume held specific resonances for the original audiences. All the trials take place in secret and hurried circumstances: the dramatist has each judge in turn disturbed from sleep to emphasise this. All concerned show a sensitivity to the need to achieve a fait accompli in the face of likely opposition from public opinion. As the accused, Christ for his part consistently refuses to bow to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the hearings or to confirm his own identity and commence pleading. 44 In context, two reasons for this may be understood: firstly his is the superior authority, and secondly each judge is in fundamental violation of basic legal principles as all demonstrate intentions not connected with the common good. All are concerned rather with immediate political expediency, for example, healing the political rift between Pilate and Herod. Although no precise analogy can be drawn, there are clearly available resonances here of the type of horse-trading which went on between local, regional, and national groups when the Lancastrian dynasty came to power. 43 44

Summa Theologiae, vol. 28, 134–5; q.96, 5a. See e.g. Christ before Pilate I, 380–97.

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These pageants, therefore, offer the possibility of more specific equations between events in sacred history and local experience of contemporary legal practices, which expose corruption in those practices. In particular, the audience observes a continuing project to match the accusation to a crime which will return the death penalty. Different crimes are tested against their counterparts in legal procedure. Annas and Caiaphas apply canon law, and in the Bowers’ and Fletchers’ pageant (XXIX), Miles III and IV are the notorious apparitors, or summoners. 45 They have taken Christ at night and red-handed in the company of his apostles; he has been identified by Judas, so they do not have to prove his identity but merely to make accusations. From this basis, Caiaphas in particular attempts to extract a confession. Once Christ has admitted that he is God’s son, Annas considers that a confession to defamation (as defined in canon law) has been achieved, and that ‘Nowe nedis nowdir wittenesse ne counsaille to call’ (XXIX: 300). Christ accuses the soldiers of wrongful arrest, as they have taken him by stealth rather than in public. He also accuses them of bearing false witness. The bishops retreat at this point, dismissing the case and the possibility of a summary execution as a blemish upon their status, but they resolve to refer their assorted grievances against Christ to Pilate as the representative of a higher secular authority analogous with the Crown. When Christ is brought before Pilate on the first occasion, the circumstances of the hearing are interesting. In the eyes of the civil authorities, Christ could be accused of ‘group intransigence directed at a social superior’, for this is effectively what he was engaged in when arrested, and this appears to be the area in which the accusers now concentrate (XXX: 196–9). 46 Riot was an offence against the king’s peace, so was a plea of the Crown, but it did not carry the death penalty. He could be condemned to death only if convicted of a felony; riot, or illegal assembly, did not become part of the law of treason until after 1485. But there were a series of adjustments to the law governing illegal assembly in the early fifteenth century, building upon the legislation of Richard II’s reign which attempted to deal with the abuses of maintenance. 47 The statute of 2 Henry V (1414) states: That if any riot, assembly or rout of people against the law be made in any part of the realm, then the justices of the peace, three or two of them at the least, and the sheriff or under-sheriff See 250–83. E.g. Brian L. Woodcock, Medieval Ecclesiastical Courts in the Diocese of Canterbury (Oxford Historical Series; London: Oxford University Press, 1952); W. Lyndwood, Provinciale, seu Constitutiones Angliae (Oxford: Hall, 1679). 46 J.G. Bellamy, Criminal Law and Society in Late Medieval and Tudor England 45

(Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1984). 47 See Paul Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of FourteenthCentury Texts (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), especially 179–85.

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of the county where such riot assembly, or rout shall be made hereafter, should come with the power of the said county, if need were, to arrest them, and them should arrest; and the same justices, sheriff, or under-sheriff should have power to record that which they found so done in their presence against the law; and that by record of the same justices, sheriff or under-sheriff, such trespassers or offenders should be convict in manner and form as is contained in the statute of forcible entries … 48

It goes on to make provision that if the crowd disperses before arrests can be made, the same prosecutors have one month to establish the truth before they have to appear with twelve men to testify. The justices, sheriffs, and under-sheriffs, all local representatives of the Crown, are then bound to enact the statute in the king’s name. The same statute further makes provision that if the justices and sheriff fail in this duty, the king’s commission shall go out under the Great Seal by the direction of the Chancellor: And that the chancellor of England for the time being, as soon as he may have knowledge of such riot, assembly or rout, shall cause to be sent the King’s writ to the justices of the peace, and to the sheriff or under-sheriff of the county where they be so made, that they shall put the statute in execution upon the pain contained in the same … 49

Pilate has to be awakened from his bed to conduct the first hearing, not only giving the performing guild, the Tapiters and Couchers, an excellent opportunity to display their wares, but more darkly suggesting that summary justice is being applied. Statute law did not approve procedure by summary justice, which perhaps explains the secretive nature of the hearing and calls into question the status of proceedings, for the play seems to make clear that justices could and did proceed in this manner despite its dubious legality. Pilate is frustrated when Christ refuses either to confess or to acknowledge his authority. In the previous play, Annas calls Pilate ‘domysman nere and nexte to þe king’ (XXIX: 341), a designation which could only properly be applied to the Chancellor, or his delegated Keeper of the Great Seal, one of the Chief Justices of the King’s Bench. 50 It is, therefore, possible that The Statutes at Large from Magna Charta to the end of the Eleventh parliament of Great Britain Anno 1761, ed. Danby Pickering, 24 vols (Cambridge: J. Bentham for Charles Bathurst, 1762–1766), vol. 3, 1413–1482 (1762), 25–33, at 25; 2 Hen. 5, st.1,

48

c.8, s.1 (1414). I am grateful to Olga Horner for bringing these to my attention. 49 Statutes at Large, vol. 3, 28–9; c.8, s.1. 50 Here I am following closely the description of Chancery proceedings given in J.H. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History (London: Butterworths, 3rd edition 1990), 112–29. See also Alan Harding, The Law Courts of Medieval England

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the dramatist is imagining a Chancery hearing in the first trial before Pilate. In the second half of the fourteenth century, specific remedies came to be sought from the Chancellor, irrespective of whether a case were pending at common law. Redress tended to be sought ad hoc, and in the fifteenth century, the Chancellor issued decrees in his own name. 51 The Chancellor offered a way of short-circuiting usual procedures and possible injustices by operating a court of conscience. 52 Chancery procedure operated by teasing out the facts of the case rather than by attending to the application of law, the Chancellor acting as both judge and jury. Pilate begins by inviting Annas and Caiaphas to join him on the bench, an offer which they decline on the grounds that they are not of sufficient status. He is then strongly protective of Christ: it was the Chancellor’s job to see that the poor and oppressed received proper justice. So what in the dramatist’s interpretation of events causes Pilate to change his mind about the seriousness of the affair? One of the random accusations which Annas and Caiaphas make in the first hearing is that Christ refuses to pay tribute to the Emperor. Pilate says that such an offence would be a treason punishable by death (XXX: 468–70), but it appears to go unproven or incorrectly formulated. When Christ is returned from Herod, Pilate remains reluctant to try him further, believing that there can now be no charges to answer. Caiaphas, however, asks for him to be brought to the bar for another hearing, eventually adding: To be kyng he claymeth, with croune, And whoso stoutely will steppe to þat state 3e suld deme ser, to be dong doune And dede. XXXIII: 329–32

This is the turning point, as Pilate significantly replies, ‘Sir, trulye þat touched to treasoune’ (XXXIII: 333). Treason is a felony, an unamendable wrong, ‘a violation of the duty of allegiance which is owed to the sovereign’ in which the wrongdoer suffered the consequent penalty of losing all he had, including his life. 53 Felonies were generally prosecuted by appeal, where the appellants lodged an oral accusation of the crime. Until the late fourteenth century, appeals of felony were usually instigated by hue and cry then brought before the county courts, the justices in eyre, but by the fifteenth century almost all appeals were heard before the King’s Bench. Records of criminal proceedings show victims’ appeals increasingly (Historical Problems, Studies, and Documents 18; London: Allen and Unwin, 1973), 92–123. 51 Baker, Introduction, 118–19. 52 Baker, Introduction, 119. 53 David M. Walker, Oxford Companion to Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 1232.

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serving only to bring the accused to court, where they were then dropped and prosecution taken over in the king’s name. 54 Christ’s refusal to accept the jurisdiction of this final hearing in open court presents further difficulties under contemporary law. Everyone who pleaded not guilty on a capital charge of felony was asked how he wished to be tried. The only answer was ‘by God and the country’, which meant by a local jury. Anyone refusing this was commonly killed without trial, often by pressing under heavy weights. There is little record of how a jury trial proceeded before the sixteenth century, as there was no systematic reporting, but it is assumed that things had changed very little in the preceding century. 55 The Tilemakers’ pageant conforms in a number of details to what is understood to have happened in such a trial, from the manner of bringing the prisoner into the court, the choice of jurors, to the entering of the plea, and the swearing in of witnesses. When Christ refuses to defend himself, no sentence is passed, but he is taken off for the buffeting and crowning with thorns because he has not pled. There is then a hiatus of fifty lines in the manuscript, during which presumably the jury gave its verdict, and selected Barabbas, against whom no indictments had been found, to be discharged. After washing his hands, Pilate pronounces the verdict. The circumstances are biblical, but the public nature of the final trial suggested to the dramatist that what began as a series of trumped-up charges for offences against the canon law has moved into the area of dubious but topical summary procedure for illegal assembly, and finally into a full arraignment for treason. The jury returns a guilty verdict impelling the death penalty at last. These pageants cannot be dated precisely. The Ordo paginarum lists the characters in the Bowers’ and Fletchers’ pageant in a way that suggests it might already have taken a form similar to what appears in the Register of the 1460s. 56 The Tapiters’ and Couchers’ pageant does seem to have been enhanced some time between 1415 and the 1460/70s’ copy, however, as the Ordo documents only Jesus, Pilate, Annas, Caiaphas, two counsellors, and four accusing Jews, making no mention of the whole episode involving the dream of Pilate’s wife. Consequently ‘mid-fifteenth-century’ is the closest we can come to dating the sequence on present evidence. A number of details, however, bear tantalising comparison with what is recorded of events surrounding the Scrope trial. For example, Capgrave, after recording how the Archbishop was unanimously supported by the city’s ecclesiastical and mercantile populations, further recounts how he was defeated by Baker, Introduction, 575. Baker, Introduction, 581 quoted from in the following analysis; see also Thomas A. Green, Verdict According to Conscience: Perspectives on the English Criminal Trial Jury 1200–1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 90–6. 56 REED: York 21. 54 55

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deceit, being persuaded by the Earl of Westmorland to dismiss the rebels and come to parley alone, and, as we have seen, the Latin chronicles concentrate on the problems that the royal party encountered when they tried to secure the death penalty, including the need to change judges. 57 Chronicle accounts of his trial and subsequent execution accordingly lay heavy emphasis on Scrope’s Christ-like last words, and the miracles which attended his death, as well as upon the local magnate Gascoigne’s Pilate-like dilemma. Similar details are contained, along with an expanded list of Scrope’s statesmanlike motives for the rebellion, in Raine’s compilation. 58 Several chroniclers attribute the later collapse of Henry IV’s health to his collusion in the condemnation of the saintly archbishop. 59 The Scrope trial was a tenacious cause célèbre in York. Scrope had been condemned in the face of the opposition of Arundel and Gascoigne, both men of national influence but with established local connections. And, as Barrie Dobson puts it: Most dramatically of all, it was popular enthusiasm for the ‘glory of York’ and ‘loyal martyr of Christ’ which came near to securing Richard Scrope’s canonisation in the face of Lancastrian opposition. 60

Henry IV was reconciled with the pope in 1408, but there are sundry testimonies to a continuing Scrope cult in York which remained strong enough to cause Henry V to appoint a Keeper of the tomb. By the mid century, Scrope had become firmly fixed in Yorkist martyrology, reinforcing the dynastic claims of Edward IV. He is featured complete with halo, in a clerestory window of the period in the Minster, opposite York’s more securely sanctified St William, as well as in York’s most famous fifteenth-century Book of Hours, the so-called ‘Bolton Hours’. 61    The dramatist in the York pageants of the trials of Christ presents at least an allusion to contemporary legal procedures which may have been inspired by the circumstances surrounding York’s perception of the miscarriage of justice which had been inflicted upon its own spiritual figurehead. He works by using procedural details as illuminating referents to expand on and reify his biblical narrative, which has the effect of enriching the potential meaning of these 57 58

Historians of the Church of York, vol. 2 (Rolls Series 71B), 306. Historians of the Church of York, vol. 2 (Rolls Series 71B), 292–311; 431–3; vol. 3

(Rolls Series 71C), 288–94. 59 Capgrave, Abbreuiacion, 229. 60 Barrie Dobson, ‘The Late Middle Ages, 1215–1500’ in A History of York Minster, ed. G.E. Aylmer and Reginald Cant (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 44–109, 108. 61 David O’Connor and Jeremy Haselock, ‘The Stained and Painted Glass’ in A History of York Minster, 317–93, 377–8. York: York Minster Library Additional MS 2, the so-called ‘Bolton Hours’, is a manuscript of lay mercantile ownership: see King, ‘Corpus Christi Plays and the “Bolton Hours”’, for its history of ownership amongst members of families of the mercantile élite.

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episodes as historical events. Christ as the delegate of all men is presented as victim because he has no badge or chain of office, no crown, no recognised voice within the system of maintenance. Arrayed against Christ the victim, separated from his own power-base, is the whole panoply of royal (Lancastrian) authority as it would have been perceived in early fifteenth-century York, and those authorities are systematically discredited. Scrope was York’s own man of God who had the courage and audacity to join a rebellion against the ruling secular power in order to promote, amongst other things, the interests of the urban mercantile class. He was seized by treachery in the very act of convening an illegal assembly with treasonable intent, and subjected to a secretive trial in which the ‘domysman nere and nexte to þe king’ refused to preside. And the trial took place in the week before Corpus Christi. A similar case has been made for the pageant of The Resurrection, although, by contrast, it contains no trial scene. Nonetheless, as Olga Horner has pointed out, this pageant too is imaginatively – and ironically – constructed around Pilate’s presumption that his actions in having Christ crucified are not legally watertight and will lead to a later inquest. 62 In this pageant, Pilate describes himself as ‘domesman chiffe in þis contré’ (3), where contré appears to be the equivalent of idiomatic expressions for ‘region’ in contemporary legal language. This would most nearly equate him with the sheriff, the agent of the Crown enacting the king’s writs issuing out of Chancery, so once again Pilate is cast as a corrupt agent of the Crown. 63 All the action in this pageant which is not directly derived from the Quem quaeritis or showing the moment of the Resurrection itself, is a continuation of the narrative begun in the Cutlers’ pageant of The Conspiracy (XXIV). In The Resurrection it unfolds first as an affirmation of the conspiratorial relationship between Annas and Caiaphas (11–13), followed by the failed attempt to buy off the Centurion and the consequent decision to secure false witnesses (71, 73, 122), and culminates in the moment when the soldiers who have awoken to the empty tomb are bribed to lie (443). The audience witnesses both the moment of the Resurrection and the cover-up. Moreover that cover-up is presented as an instance of embracery, or what amounts to perjury in modern legal parlance. 64 The role of the audience as witnesses has, therefore, both spiritual and, more particularly, legal connotations in this pageant. 65

62 Horner, ‘“Us Must Make Lies”’. I am indebted to this piece of work for the following analysis of The Resurrection which was developed in parallel with my own work on the trial plays. 63 Horner, ‘“Us Must Make Lies”‘, 49. 64 Horner, ‘“Us Must Make Lies”‘, 42–7. 65 Horner, ‘“Us Must Make Lies”‘, 27–8.

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In fourteenth- and fifteenth-century York, as in the rest of the country, being a witness entailed a real-life obligation to the community, a duty of which the original spectators of The Resurrection were well aware. The responsibilities inherent in witnessing any event of importance to a future criminal or civil law action might be expected to influence the medieval audience’s attitude to, and reception of, all the dramatised biblical events in the mystery cycle. Again the audience is cast as jury, as in the medieval jury system the jury were ‘both witnesses to the facts and sole judges of the truth of those facts’, 66 and, unlike modern practice, prior knowledge of the parties and actions concerned was a prerequisite. To conclude, one may wish to see the York Cycle, following the highly politically and ecclesiastically unstable final decade of the fourteenth century, flowing into the space left by the return to religious orthodoxy following the period of Arundel’s Constitutions and the suppression of Lollardy. To see it as a play in which biblical and liturgical text is reproduced in English but in verse; where a succession of laymen as Christ pit their wits against representatives of ecclesiastical authority; and one enacts the institution of the first Sacrament of the Altar, appropriating that sacrament to the lay domain. Equally there is a potential narrative of how York, a peculiarly clergyridden city, used its various celebrations of the feast of Corpus Christi to assert division between Abbey, Minster, and City. But on both counts the argument fails quite to stack up, as the various records leave across time a more detailed, complex, and indeterminate impression. Furthermore, what the group of pageants examined here in detail seem to suggest is that however nuanced internal relations were within York, the City which owned the mystery cycle operated as a single entity in the face of the outside world, particularly in the form of the Crown. After at least three quarters of a century of uneasy relations with the monarchy, the City attempted to establish a fresh start with the new monarch and the new dynasty on the accession of Henry VII. The Virgin greeted Henry on this occasion with a speech which demonstrates how the City perceived, or at least wished to present, its identity in relation to the monarch and to God: Henry sith my sone as thy souueraigne hath the sothly assigned Of his grace to be gouernour of his peoplez proteccion ffull Specially that thyn heire[?ear] of pytie bee declynede I pray thee sith [since] thy people hath me muche in affeccion My sonne & my soueraigne In whom Is eleccion Singularly this Cite hath honourrede humbly And made me ther meane [mediatrix] withoute obieccion In hope of their helpe to haue it holly What I aske of his grace he grauntith it goodly 66

Horner, ‘“Us Must Make Lies”‘, 31.

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Os [As] A beme of al bountevous benygne The his knyght he hath chosen victoriously To convok & concorde this thy Countrey condigne I pray in this space ffor this Citie Is a place of my pleasing Than haue thou no drede nor no doubting Contynuelly her in thy Reynyng I shall show to my sonne to sende thee his grace. 67

This is an affirmation of York as a civic space, a site privileged by divine recognition, here a negotiating position from which to welcome the new monarch. The manner in which this is done is very decorous, as the Virgin Mary, as Virgin Mary, warns Henry of York’s privileged spiritual status, while as actor and citizen of York the speaker is also asking that Henry, as Christ’s chosen knight, should look favourably upon the City. The reciprocities claimed in the Virgin’s speech here depend upon the City’s understanding of its relationship with God. That relationship is what the pageants, with their repeated mimetic enactment of the transformational power of meeting, visitation, or hypapante, annually assert and refresh. It is a relationship with Christ whose specialness is a rhetorical construct which the York Cycle exists to articulate and display.  

 

67 REED: York, 149. The text is at least tactfully oblique, and may be corrupt, but the Virgin, as Christ’s mediator seems to be asking Henry on her son’s behalf to confer patronage on York as a specially favoured city.

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Manuscripts Edinburgh: National Library of Scotland, Blairs College MS Dep 221 no. 9. London: British Library Additional MS 35290, ‘The York Register’. York: University of York, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research: York District Probate Register (1389–1514). York: York City Archives, A/Y Memorandum Book. York: York Minster Library Additional MS 2, ‘The Bolton Hours’. York: York Minster Library MS XVI. K. 6. Printed Books Aelred of Rievaulx, Life of St Edward, King and Confessor, trans. Jerome Bertram (Guildford: St Edward’s Press, 1990). Ambrose, Saint, of Milan, in Saints Gregory Nazianen and Ambrose, Funeral Orations, trans. Leo P. McCaulay, John J. Sullivan, Martin R.P. McGuire, and Roy J. Deferrari (Fathers of the Church 22; Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968, revised reprint of 1953 edition). Anderson, M.D., Drama and Imagery in English Medieval Churches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963). Aquinas, Saint Thomas, Summa Theologiae ed. and trans. Thomas Gilby and others, 61 vols (London: Blackfriars with Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964–1981). On-line version from 1920 edition, as Summa Theologica, at http://www.newadvent.org/summa. Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953), 143–73. Augustinus, Aurelius, (Saint Augustine), Sermo 202, cap. 2, In Epiph. Domini, PL 38, cols 1033–5. Augustinus, Aurelius, (Saint Augustine), Tractatus 49 in Joannem, PL 35, cols 1747–57. Baker, J.H., An Introduction to English Legal History (London: Butterworths, 3rd edition 1990). Bakhtin, Mikhail, Rabelais and his World, trans. Helène Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). Beadle, Richard, ‘Poetry, Theology and Drama in the York Creation and Fall of Lucifer’ in Religion in the Poetry and Drama of the Late Middle Ages in England, ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Cambridge: Brewer, 1990), 213–27. 205

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Beadle, Richard, ‘The Shipwrights’ Craft’, in Aspects of Early English Drama, ed. Paula Neuss (Cambridge: Brewer, 1983), 50–61. Beadle, Richard, ‘The York Cycle’ in Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, 85–108. Beadle, Richard, ‘The York Hosiers’ Play of Moses and Pharaoh: a Middle English Dramatist at Work’ Poetica 19 (1984), 3–26. Beckwith, Sarah, Christ's Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings (New York and London: Routledge, 1993). Beckwith, Sarah, Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in the York Corpus Christi Play (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001). Bellamy, J.G., Criminal Law and Society in Late Medieval and Tudor England (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1984). Bennett, J.A.W., Poetry of the Passion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). Bible (Douay-Rheims version) see The Holy Bible … Biblia Pauperum: A Facsimile and Edition, ed. Avril Henry (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1987).

Biblia Pauperum: Facsimile Edition of the Forty-Leaf Blockbook in the Library or Esztergom Cathedral, introduction and notes by Elizabeth Soltész (Budapest: Corvina Press, 1967).

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Laurentio Turrado (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1965). Birgitta of Sweden, Saint, The Revelations of St Birgitta of Sweden; Revelationes Liber VII, ed. Birger Bergh (Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftsallskapet Series 2, Band 7: 7; Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksells, 1967). The Blickling Homilies, ed. R. Morris, EETS OS 58, 63, 73 (1874). Bloomfield, Morton W., The Seven Deadly Sins (East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1952). Blum, Pamela Z., ‘Liturgical Influences on the Design of the West Front at Wells and Salisbury’, Gesta 25: 1 (1986), 145–50. (Pseudo-)Bonaventura Meditaciones Vitae Christi in S. Bonaventurae Opera Omnia, ed. A.C, Peltier, 15 vols (Paris: Vives, 1864–1871), vol. 12, 509–630. Breviarium ad usum insignis Ecclesie Eboracensis (York Breviary), ed. S.W. Lawley, 2 vols, Surtees Society Publications 71 (1880 for 1871) and 75 (1883 for 1882). Butterworth, Phil, ‘The York Crucifixion: Actor/Audience Relationship’, Medieval English Theatre 14 (1992), 67–76.

Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office: Henry IV, ed. R.C. Fowler, 4 vols (London: HMSO for PRO, 1903–1909; repr. Nendeln: Kraus, 1971), vol. 1, 1399–1401 (1903), vol. 2, 1401–1405 (1905), vol. 3, 1405–1408 (1907), vol. 4, 1408–1413 (1909). Calendar of Patent Rolls: Henry V, ed. R.C. Fowler, 2 vols (London: HMSO for PRO, 1910–1911; repr. Nendeln: Kraus, 1971), vol. 1, 1413–1416, (1910), vol. 2, 1416–1422 (1911). Calendar of Patent Rolls: Richard II, ed. G. J. Morris with R.C. Fowler (vol. 1),

6 vols (London: HMSO, 1895–1909; repr. Nendeln: Kraus, 1971), vol. 1, 1377–1381 (1895), vol. 2, 1381–1385 (1897), vol. 3, 1385–1389 (1900), vol. 4, 1388–1392 (1902), vol. 5, 1391–1396 (1905), vol. 6, 1396–1399 (1909). 206

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Capgrave, John, Abbreuiacion of Cronicles, ed. Peter Lucas, EETS OS 285 (1983). Catholic Encyclopaedia, see New Catholic Encyclopaedia. Cawley, A.C., ‘Middle English Metrical Versions of the Decalogue with Reference to the English Corpus Christi Cycles’, Leeds Studies in English NS 8 (1975), 129–45. Chambers, E.K., The Medieval Stage, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903). Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Miller’s Prologue and Tale, ed. James Winny (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971). The Chester Mystery Cycle, ed. R.M. Lumiansky and David Mills, EETS SS 3 (1974) and SS 9 (1986). Clanchy, Michael, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979; second edition, 1993). Collins, Fletcher, The Production of Medieval Church Music-Drama (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1972). Connelly, Joseph, Hymns of the Roman Liturgy (London and New York: Longmans, Green, 1957). Cook, Robert Bielby, Some Early Civic Wills of York, 8 papers (read to the Yorkshire Architectural Society), offprints (1906–1919) collected in one volume in York Central Library, from Reports and Papers Read at the

Meetings of the Architectural Societies of the County of Lincoln, County of York, Archdeaconries of Northampton and Oakham, Diocese of Worcester and County of Leicester [paper 1] 28: 2 (1906), 827-71 (name

given as R. Bielby Cooke); [paper 2] 31: 2 (1912), 319-39 (R.B Cooke); [paper 3] 32: 1 (1913), 293-317 (R.B. Cook); [paper 4] 32: 2 (1914), 569-93; [paper 5] 33: 1 (1915), 161-77; [paper 6] 33: 2 (1916), 473-92; [paper 7] 34: 1 (1917), 201-217; [paper 8] 35: 1 (1919), 61-74. The Coventry Corpus Christi Plays, ed. Pamela M. King and Clifford Davidson (Early Drama, Art, and Music Reference Series 27; Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000). Cowen, Janet, ‘Heven and erthe in lytyl space’ in Aspects of Early English Drama, ed. Paula Neuss (Cambridge: Brewer, 1983), 62–77. Cowling, Douglas, ‘The Liturgical Celebration of Corpus Christi in Medieval York’, REED Newsletter (1976) part 2, 5–9. Craig, Hardin, ‘The Origin of the Old Testament Plays’, Modern Philology 10 (1913), 473–87. Crouch, David J.F., Piety, Fraternity and Power: Religious Guilds in Late Medieval Yorkshire (York: York Medieval Press, 2000). Davidson Clifford, and David O’Connor, York Art: A Subject List of Extant and Lost Art, including items relevant to Early Drama (Early Drama, Art, and Music Reference Series 1; Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, Medieval Institute Publications, 1978). Digby Plays, see The Late Medieval Religious Plays of Bodleian MSS Digby 133 … Dives and Pauper, edited Priscilla Heath Barnum, EETS 275 (1976), 280 (1980), and 325 (2004). Dobson, R.B., ‘Admission to the Freedom of the City of York in the Later Middle Ages’, Economic History Review, Series 2: 26 (1973), 1–22; an assessment of the Register of the Freemen of the City of York, ed. 207

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F. Collins, Surtees Society Publications 96 (1897 for 1896) and 102 (1900 for 1899). Dobson, R.B. (Barrie), ‘The Late Middle Ages, 1215–1500’ in A History of York Minster, ed. G.E. Aylmer and Reginald Cant (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 44–109. Dobson, R.B., ‘The Residentiary Canons of York in the Fifteenth Century’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 30 (1979), 145–74. Dorrell (Rogerson), Margaret, ‘Procession and Play: Corpus Christi Day in York Before 1427’, the first of her ‘Two Studies of the York Corpus Christi Play’, Leeds Studies in English NS 6 (1972), 65–111. Drake, Francis, Eboracum (London: [W. Bowyer? for the author], 1736). Driver, Tom F., The Sense of History in Greek and Shakespearian Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960). Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992). Durandus, William, Rationale divinorum officiorum, ed. A. Davril and T.M. Thibodeau, 3 vols (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis 140, 140A, 140B; Turnhout: Brepols, 1995–2000). Fallow, T.M., and others, ‘Religious Houses’ in The Victoria History of the County of York, 3 vols (The Victoria History of the Counties of England; London: Archibald Constable, St Catherine Press, 1907–1925). Forrest, Ian, The Detection of Heresy in Late Medieval England (Oxford Historical Monographs; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005). Fouquet, Jean, The Hours of Etienne Chevalier, Musée Condé, Chantilly, preface Charles Sterling, introduction and legends Claude Schaefer (London: Thames and Hudson, 1972). French, Thomas, York Minster: The Great East Window (Corpus Vitrearum Medii Ævi, Great Britain: Summary Catalogue 2; Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1995). Garth, Helen M., Saint Mary Magdalene in Medieval Literature (Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science 67: 3; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1950). Glossa Ordinaria, see Walafrid Strabo. Gordon, Dillian, and others, Making and Meaning: The Wilton Diptych (London: National Gallery, 1993). Gray, Douglas, see A Selection of Religious Lyrics. Green, Thomas A., Verdict According to Conscience: Perspectives on the English Criminal Trial Jury 1200–1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). Harding, Alan, The Law Courts of Medieval England (Historical Problems, Studies, and Documents 18; London: Allen and Unwin, 1973), 92–123. Hardison, O.B., Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1969). Harrison, F., The Painted Glass of York: An Account of the Medieval Glass of the Minster and the Parish Churches (London: SPCK, 1927). Haskins, Susan, Mary Magdalen (London: HarperCollins, 1993). Hebgin-Barnes, P., The Medieval Stained Glass of the County of Lincolnshire (Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi, Great Britain: Summary Catalogue 3; Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1996). 208

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Hilary of Poitiers, Saint, Opera, ed. the Benedictine monks of St Maur (Paris: 1693). Hilary of Poitiers, Saint, Saint Hilary of Poitiers: On the Trinity, trans. Stephen McKenna (Fathers of the Church 25; Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968; reprint of 1954 edition). The Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops, ed. James Raine, 3 vols (Rolls Series 71, 71B, 71C; London, Longman, 1879–1894), vol. 1 (Rolls Series 71; 1879), vol. 2 (Rolls Series 71B; 1886), vol. 3 (Rolls Series 71C; 1894). A History of York Minster, ed. G.E. Aylmer and Reginald Cant (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977). A History of Yorkshire: The City of York, ed. P.M. Tillot (The Victoria History of the Counties of England; London: Oxford University Press for University of London Institute of Historical Research, 1961). The Holy Bible translated from the Latin Vulgate (Douay-Rheims version):

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(Rockford, ILL: TAN Books, 1971, facsimile of Baltimore: Murphy, 1899 edition). Horner, Olga, ‘“Us Must Make Lies”: Witness, Evidence, and Proof in the York Resurrection’, Medieval English Theatre 20 (1998), 24–76. Horstman, Carl, ‘[Henry Suso’s] Orologium Sapientiae, or The Seven Poyntes of Trewe Wisdom, aus Ms. Douce 114’, Anglia 10 (1898), 323-89. Hudson, Anne, ‘A New Look at the Lay Folks’ Catechism’, Viator 16 (1985), 243–58. Hudson, Anne, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). Hugh of St Victor, De Arca Noe Morali, PL 176 (1854), cols 618–80. Hughes, Andrew, Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office: A Guide to their Organisation and Terminology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982). Hughes, Jonathan, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1988). Hutton, Ronald, The Making of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). Hutton, Ronald, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Jacob, E.F., The Fifteenth Century, 1399–1485 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978; reprint of 1961 edition). Jacobus de Voragine, see Voragine, Jacobus de. James, Montague Rhodes, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924). James, Montague Rhodes, ‘The Catalogue of the Library of the Augustinian Friars at York, now first edited from the manuscript at Trinity College, Dublin‘ in Fasciculus Ioanni Willis Clark dicatus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909), 2–96. Jansen, Katherine Ludwig, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). 209

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Jenney, Adeline M., ‘A Further Word as to the Origin of the Old Testament Plays’, Modern Philology 13 (1915), 59–64. Johnston, Alexandra F., ‘The Guild of Corpus Christi and the Procession of Corpus Christi in York’, Medieval Studies 38 (1976), 372–84. Johnston, Alexandra F., ‘The Plays of the Religious Guilds of York: The Creed Play and the Pater Noster Play’, Speculum 50 (1975), 55–90. Johnston, Alexandra F., ‘The Procession and Play of Corpus Christi in York after 1426’, Leeds Studies in English NS 7 (1973–1974), 55–62. Johnston, Alexandra F., ‘What if no Texts Survived? External Evidence for Early English Drama’ in Contexts for Early English Drama, ed. Marianne G. Briscoe and John C. Coldewey (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), 1–19. The Kalender of Shepherdes, ed. H.O. Sommer, 3 vols in 1 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1892; facsimile reprint of London: Pynson, 1506). Kempe, Margery, The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. S. B. Meech, EETS OS 212 (1940). King, Pamela M., ‘Calendar and Text: Christ’s Ministry in the York Plays and the Liturgy’, Medium Ævum 67 (1998), 30–59. King, Pamela M., ‘Contemporary Cultural Models for the Trial Plays in the York Cycle’ in Drama and Community: People and Plays in Medieval Europe, ed. Alan Hindley (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 200–16. King, Pamela M., ‘Corpus Christi Plays and the “Bolton Hours” 1: Tastes in Lay Piety and Patronage in Fifteenth-Century York’, Medieval English Theatre 18 (1998 for 1996), 46–62. King, Pamela M., ‘Corpus Christi: Valencia’, European Medieval Drama 4 (2000), 181–205. King, Pamela M., ‘La Festa d’Elx: The Festival of the Assumption of the Virgin, Elche (Alicante)’, Medieval English Theatre 8:1 (1986), 21–50. King, Pamela M., ‘Spatial Semantics and the Medieval Theatre’ in Themes in Drama, Volume 9: The Theatrical Space, ed. J. Redmond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 45–58. King, Pamela M., ‘The York Cycle’ in The Blackwell Companion to Medieval Literature and Culture c.1350–c.1500, ed. Peter Brown (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006). King, Pamela M., ‘The York Cycle and Instruction on the Sacraments’ in Learning and Literacy in Medieval England and Abroad, ed. Sarah Rees Jones (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 3; Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 155–78. King, Pamela M., ‘York Plays and the Feast of Corpus Christi: A Reconsideration’, Medieval English Theatre 22 (2002 for 2000), 13–32. King, Pamela M., ‘The York Plays in Performance: Civitas versus Templum’, Medieval English Theatre 24 (2005), 84–97. King, Pamela M., ‘York Plays, Urban Piety, and the Case of Nicholas Blackburn, Mercer’, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 232 (1995), 37–50. Kinneavy, G.B., A Concordance to the York Plays (New York and London: Garland, 1986). Kolve, V.A., The Play Called Corpus Christi (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1966). 210

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Critical Edition based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686 with Introduction, Notes and Glossary, ed. Michael G.

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Mills, David, Recycling the Cycle: The City of Chester and Its Whitsun Plays (Studies in Early English Drama 4; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998). Mirk, John, Mirk’s Festial: A Collection of Homilies: 1, ed. Theodor Erbe, EETS, ES 96 (1905). Myrc [Mirk], John, Instructions for Parish Priests, ed. Edward Peacock, EETS OS 31 (1868, revised 1902). The Mirour of Mans Saluacioune, ed. Avril Henry (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1986). Missale ad usum insignis ecclesie Eboracensis (The York Missal), ed. W.G. Henderson, 2 vols, Surtees Society Publications 59 (1874 for 1872) and 60 (1874 for 1872). Muir, Lynette, The Biblical Drama of Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Myrc, John, see Mirk. The N-Town Play: Cotton MS Vespasian D.8, ed. Stephen Spector, 2 vols, EETS SS 11 (1991) and SS 12 (1991). Nelson, Alan H., ‘The Temptation of Christ; Or the English Temptation of Satan’ in Medieval English Drama: Essays Critical and Contextual, ed. Jerome Taylor and Alan Nelson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 218–29. Neville, Gwen Kennedy, The Mother Town: Civic Ritual, Symbol, and Experience in the Borders of Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). New Catholic Encyclopaedia, 17 vols (New York etc: McGraw Hill, 1967); vols 1–15 (1967), supplements vol. 16 (1974) and vol. 17 (1979). See also The Catholic Encyclopaedia, 1907–12 edition on-line at http://www. org.newadvent/cathen. Nicholas de Lyra, see Lyra, Nicholas de. Nichols, Ann Eljenholm, Seeable Signs: The Iconography of the Seven Sacraments 1350–1544 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994). O’Connor, David, and Jeremy Haselock, ‘The Stained and Painted Glass’ in A History of York Minster, ed. G.E. Aylmer and Reginald Cant (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 317–93. The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture, ed. Peter and Linda Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Palmer, Barbara D., ‘Recycling “The Wakefield Cycle”: The Records’, Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 41 (2002), 88–130. Palmer, Barbara D., ‘”Towneley Plays” or “Wakefield Cycle” Revisited’, Comparative Drama 21 (1988), 318–48. Parker, Elizabeth C., ‘Architecture as Liturgical Setting’ in The Liturgy of the Medieval Church, ed. Thomas J. Hefferman and E. Ann Matter (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2001), 273–326. The Passion Play from the N. town Manuscript, ed. Peter Meredith (London: Longman, 1990). Patrides, C.A., The Grand Design of God: The Literary Form of the Christian View of History (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972). Pettitt, Tom, ‘Moving Encounters: Choreographing Stage and Spectators in Urban Theatre and Pageantry’, Medium Aevum Quotidianum 48 (2003), 63–93. 212

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Painted Windows of Great Malvern Priory Church, Worcestershire

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Twycross, Meg, ‘Forget the 4.30 a.m. Start’, Medieval English Theatre 25 (2003), 98–152. Twycross, Meg, ‘Medieval English Theatre: Codes and Genres’ in The

Blackwell Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c.1350–c.1500, ed. Peter Brown (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006). Twycross, Meg, ‘The Ordo paginarum revisited, with a digital camera’ in ‘Bring furth the pagants’: Studies in Early English Drama presented to Alexandra F. Johnston, ed. David Klausner (Toronto: University of

Toronto Press, 2006). Twycross, Meg, ‘Playing the Resurrection’ in Medieval Studies for J.A.W. Bennett, ed. P.L. Heyworth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 273–96. Twycross, Meg, ‘Some Aliens in York and their Overseas Connections: Up to c. 1470’, Leeds Studies in English NS 29 (1998), 359–80; published as Essays in Honour of Peter Meredith, ed. Catherine Batt. Twycross, Meg, ‘Some Approaches to Dramatic Festivity, especially Processions’ in Festive Drama, ed. Meg Twycross (Cambridge: Brewer, 1996), 1–33. Twycross, Meg, ‘The Theatre’ in The Blackwell Companion to the Bible and Culture, ed. John Sawyer (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006). Twycross, Meg, ‘The Theatricality of Medieval English Plays’ in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed. Richard Beadle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 37–84. Twycross, Meg, and Sarah Carpenter, Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). Vérard, Antoine, L’art de bien vivre et bien mourir (Paris: Antoine Vérard for André Bocard, February 12, ‘1453’, probably 1493/4). The Victoria History of the County of York, ed. William Page, 3 vols (The Victoria History of the Counties of England; London: Archibald Constable, 1907–1925; reprinted London: Dawsons for University of London Institute of Historical Research, 1974). A Victoria History of Yorkshire: The City of York, see A History of Yorkshire … Vogel, Cyrille, Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources, rev. and trans. William G. Storey and Niels Krogh Rasmussen (NPM Studies in Church Music and Liturgy; Washington DC: Pastoral Press, 1986). Voragine, Jacobus de, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols, (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). Walafrid Strabo, Glossa Ordinaria, PL 113–114; Evangelium secundum Ioannem, PL 114, cols 355–426. Walker, David M., Oxford Companion to Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). Walsingham, Thomas, Historia Anglicana in Chronica Monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. Henry Thomas Riley, 12 vols (Rolls Series 28; 1863–1876), vol. 2 (Rolls Series 28B, 1864). Wee, David, ‘The Temptation of Christ and the Motif of Divine Duplicity in the Corpus Christi Cycle Drama’, Modern Philology 72 (1974), 1–16. Woodcock, Brian L., Medieval Ecclesiastical Courts in the Diocese of Canterbury (Oxford Historical Series; London: Oxford University Press, 1952). 215

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Woolf, Rosemary, The English Mystery Plays (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972). Woolf, Rosemary, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). York Memorandum Book, ed. Maud Sellers, 2 vols, Surtees Society Publications 120 (1912 for 1911) and 125 (1915 for 1914). York Memorandum Book BY, ed. Joyce W. Percy, Surtees Society Publications 186 (1973).

The York Play: A Facsimile of British Library MS Additional 35290 together with a Facsimile of the ‘Ordo Paginarum’ section of the A/Y Memorandum Book, ed. Richard Beadle and Peter Meredith (Leeds Texts and Monographs Medieval Drama Facsimiles 7; Leeds: University of Leeds School of English, 1983). The York Plays, ed. Richard Beadle (London: Arnold, 1982).

York Plays: The Plays performed by the Crafts or Mysteries of York on the Day of Corpus Christi in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, ed. Lucy

Toulmin Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885). Young, Karl, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933). Zeeman (Salter), Elizabeth, ‘Two Middle English Versions of a Prayer to the Sacrament’, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen NS 194 (1957), 113–21.

Unpublished Thesis Piroyanski, Danna, Political Martyrdom in Late Medieval England (unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 2005). Electronic Publications Aquinas, Saint Thomas, Summa Theologica; 1920 Blackfriars edition on-line at http://www.newadvent.org/summa: The Catholic Encyclopaedia; 1907–12 edition on-line at http://www. org.newadvent/cathen. Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000; http://encarta.msn.com (Microsoft Corporation, © 1997–2000). The Roland Collection of Films and Videos on Art, http://www.rolandcollection.com/rolandcollection/section/27/210.htm

216

Index of References to Liturgical Material

N.b. this is not an exhaustive list of all liturgical material in the Calendar, merely of those items which are directly referred to in this book. After the material in daily use, it follows the order of the Calendar, starting with Advent: first the services of the Season, then the services of the Saints. The references are arranged so that the Gospel for the day comes first, followed by the Epistle/Lesson from the Missal, the Lesson from the Breviary, then other material roughly in order of service. Palm Sunday, however, which is discussed in detail, is arranged completely in order of service. Abbreviations: M York Missal vol. 1; M2 York Missal vol. 2; B Breviary; Pr York Manual and Processional; SM Sarum Missal. SERVICE BOOK

TYPE

INCIPIT OR SUBJECT BIBLICAL REFERENCE/AUTHOR

PAGE IN

PAGE IN

EDITION

TEXT

DAILY USE

CANON OF THE MASS Missal

Missal, Breviary

Words of consecration, adapted from 1 Corinthians 11: 23–26 Pater noster (Lord’s Prayer), Matthew 6: 9–13

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,

Missal

John 1: 30, adapted

M 184–7 M 192–3, B passim

174

26, 39, 88, 121, 159

M 196

171

CANONICAL HOURS Hours of the BVM and elsewhere Breviary Antiphon Ave Maria, Luke 1: 28, 42

B 11, 677, & passim 21–2, 39, 88

Matins

Breviary

Vespers

Breviary

Compline Breviary

Hymn

Te Deum, Nicetas of Remesiana

Canticle

Magnificat, Luke 1: 46–55

Canticle

Nunc dimittis, Luke 2: 29–32

B 930–1

53

B 929 & passim 39, 56, 58, 62, 104, 128 B 931 122–4, 126–8

Trinity Sunday to end of Advent Breviary Antiphon Salve Regina, ?Hermannus Contractus (1013–1054)

217

–

21

LITURGICAL INDEX FEASTS OF THE SEASONS

Advent Week 3, Ember Wednesday Missal

Gospel

M7

93

Visitation, Luke 1: 39–47

M7

93

John the Baptist as vox clamantis, John 1: 19–28

M 12

42

Liturgy in general

M 14–20

97

Hodie scietis, Exodus 16: 7 Deus qui nos redemptionis Tollite portas, Psalm 23: 7–10 (AV Ps 24) Da nobis, Domine

M 13 M 13 M 13 M 3–14

98 98 99 102

Annunciation, Luke 1: 26–38

Advent Week 3, Ember Friday

Missal

Gospel

Advent 4, Sunday

Missal

Gospel

Christmas

Missal

Christmas Eve

Missal Missal Missal Missal

Introit Collect Offertory Postcomm.

Christmas Day in gallicantu Lesson Populus gentium qui ambulabat in tenebris,

Missal

Missal Missal Missal

Collect Sequence Secret

Christmas Day in aurora

Missal Missal Missal

Sequence Secret Postcomm.

Isaiah 9: 2, 6, 7

Deus qui hanc sacratissimam Nato canunt omnia Accepta tibi sit

M 14 M 15 M 15

49, 98–9, 101 99 99 102

[Laetabundus] Angelus consilii

M 17 M 17 M 18

100, 114 102 103

Munera nostra, quaesumus Hujus nos, Domine

Christmas Day: Main Mass In principio, John 1: 1–14 Gospel

Missal Breviary Breviary Breviary Breviary Breviary Process. Process. Process. Process.

Lesson Hymn Hymn Hymn Prose Procession Responsory Responsory Responsory

Holy Innocents

Missal Breviary

Introit Antiphon

Holy Innocents, Octave

Breviary

Lesson

Epiphany to Septuagesima

Missal

Gospels

Epiphany Vigil

Missal 1

1

Sequence

M 14–15

A solis ortus cardine, Caelius Sedulius Adam vetus, Fortunatus (excerpt) Presepe poni, Fortunatus (excerpt) Quem aethera Beata es, Maria to Benedictus qui venit Descendit de caelis Verbum caro factum est, John 1: 14 In principio, John 1: 1

M 19 M 83–5 M 88 M 90–1 M 90 B 79, Pr 141–2 Pr 138–42 Pr 140 Pr 141 Pr 141

107 104 104 104 104 99 97 99 107 107

Ex ore infantium, Psalm 8: 3 Herodes iratus, adapted from Matthew 2: 16

M 23 M 118–19

121 111

Anon on Massacre of the Innocents and Flight into Egypt

M 153–5

119

Ministry, see below

M 31–40

44

Laetabundus

M 31

Bede on Nativity

If Sunday.

218

114

LITURGICAL INDEX Breviary

Lesson

Breviary

Lesson

Return of Holy Family from Egypt, Matthew 2: 19–23 Augustine on Return from Egypt

Missal Missal Missal Missal

Gospel Collect Sequence Offertory

Deus qui hodierna Epiphaniam Domino Reges Tharsis et insulae,

Missal Breviary Breviary Breviary Process.

Postcomm. Lesson Lesson Responsory

Epiphany

B 56 B 156–7

Epiphany, Matthew 2: 1–12

Psalm 71: 10–11 (AV Psalm 72)

Praesta, quaesumus

Gregory the Great on the Epiphany Baptism and genealogy of Christ, Luke 3: 21–37 Baptism of Christ. Luke 3: 21–2, supplemented with Matthew 17: 5 2

117 118

M 32 M 31 M 32

106 107, 114 114–15

M 33 M 33 B 165–7 B 167–8 B 167, Pr 143

108 108 106, 111 107 107

Epiphany, Sunday within Octave

Missal

Gospel

Missal

Epistle

Epiphany, Octave

Missal

Gospel

Missal Missal Breviary

Gradual Sequence Antiphon

M 34 36–7, 40–4, 46, 66, 106–8, 171, 173 The Old Law and grace, Romans 3: 19–26 M 33 37 Baptism of Christ, Matthew 3: 13–17

Baptist recognises Christ, John 1: 29–34 Omnes de Saba, Isaiah 60: 6

Epiphaniam Domino

Baptism, ‘dragon’s power’; adapted from Psalm 73: 13 (AV 74)

M 35 36–7, 40–4, 46, 66, 106–7, 171, 173 M 35 42 M 35 42, 117

Epiphany, Sunday after Octave

B 193

Missal

Gospel

Christ and the Doctors, Luke 2: 42–52

M 36

Missal

Epistle

Church the Body of Christ, Romans 12: 1–5

M 35

Epiphany, Sunday 2 after Octave

43

36–8, 44, 46, 66 37, 46

M 37

Missal

Gospel

Marriage at Cana, John 2: 1–11

Missal

Epistle

Christian community and diversity of gifts, Romans 12: 6–16

M 37

37, 46

Jesus heals many, Matthew 4: 23–5

M 37

44, 46

Jesus casts out devil, Luke 4: 31–7

M 38

44, 46

Jesus heals Centurion’s servant, Matthew 8: 1–15

M 39

44

Choosing of the Apostles, Mark 3: 6–15

M 39

44, 47

Jesus heals leper, Luke 5: 12–15

M 39

44, 47

M 39

44, 47

Epiphany 2, Feria 4 Missal

Gospel

Epiphany 2, Feria 6 Missal

Gospel

37, 44, 46, 66, 107

Epiphany, Sunday 3 after Octave Missal

Gospel

Epiphany 3, Feria 4 Missal

Gospel

Epiphany 3, Feria 6 Missal

Gospel

Epiphany, Sunday 4 after Octave Missal

2

Gospel

Jesus stills tempest, Matthew 8: 23–7

The Transfiguration.

219

LITURGICAL INDEX Missal

Epistle

Epiphany 4, Feria 6 Missal

Gospel

Ten Commandments: Love fulfils the Law, Romans 13: 8–10

M 39

41, 47

Qualifications for discipleship, Luke 9: 57–62

M 39

44, 47

B 230–343

35, 84 48 44, 68 48

Septuagesima period (70 days) Breviary

Lessons

from Genesis and Exodus

Septuagesima to Quadragesima Missal Missal Missal Breviary

Gospels Gospels Gospels Lessons

Foretell the Passion Ministry Parables from Genesis

M 40–51 M 40–51 M 40–51 B 230–69

Breviary Breviary

Antiphons Psalms

Penitential Penitential

B 230–69 B 230–69

48–9, 50, 56, 66 56 56

Septuagesima Sunday and Week Breviary

Lessons

Creation, Genesis 1, 2

B 231–44 49–51, 56

Septuagesima Sunday

M 41

Lesson

Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, Matthew 20: 1–16 Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, Matthew 20: 1–16 Creation, Days 1–3, Genesis 1: 1–5, 6–8, 9–11

Breviary

Lesson

Creation, Days 1–3: Light, Genesis 1: 1–5 Creation, Days 1–3: Day 3, Genesis 1: 9–11 Augustine on the Creation of Man

B 231 B 232 B 233–4

Breviary

Lesson

B 234–6

Breviary

Antiphon

Breviary Breviary

Responsory Responsory

Gregory the Great on the Labourers in the Vineyard and the Ages of Man Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, Matthew 20: 1–16 Creation, Genesis 1: 1, 2, 26–7, 31; 2: 1, 2, 7 Creation of Man, Genesis 2: 7

Breviary Breviary Breviary Breviary

Responsory Responsory Responsory Responsory

B 232–3, B 235 B 233–5 B 235-6

Breviary

Psalms

Creation, Day 7, Genesis 1: 31; 2: 1–2 Creation of Eve, Genesis 2: 18, 20 Garden of Eden, Genesis 2: 8–9, 15, 17 Killing of Abel: Ubi est Abel …de manu tua, Genesis 4: 9–11 Penitential: Psalms 21 (AV 22), 50 (AV 51), 62 (AV 63), 117 (AV 118)

Missal

Gospel

Breviary

Gospel

Breviary

Septuagesima Week

49, 52–6, 58, 67

B 234

49, 52–6, 58, 67

B 231–5

49–50, 52, 60, 66 49, 52–6, 58, 67 49, 54

B 231–3, B 233

51–2, 55, 66 54 55 55

56

B 241 B 236 B 236

52 55

Breviary Breviary

Antiphon Responsory

Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, Matthew 20: 12–14 Creation of Eve, Genesis 2: 21–3 Fall of Man, Genesis 3: 8–10, 17–18, 22, 24

Breviary

Responsory

Expulsion from Eden, Genesis 3: 22, 24

B 236

Creation, Day 3, Genesis: 1: 12–13 Creation, Day 4, Genesis 1: 14–19

B 239 B 239–40

Lesson Lesson

220

52, 58, 66

B 237

Antiphon

Breviary Breviary

49, 53–4

B 237, 238–9

Breviary

Septuagesima, Feria 2

49–52, 54 52 54

49, 55–8, 61, 66 56 54 54

LITURGICAL INDEX

Septuagesima, Feria 3

Breviary Breviary Breviary

Lesson Lesson Antiphon

Septuagesima, Feria 4 Missal

Gospel

Breviary

Lesson

Breviary

Antiphon

Breviary

Lesson

Septuagesima, Feria 5

Breviary Breviary Breviary

Lesson Lesson Antiphon

Septuagesima, Feria 6

Missal Breviary Breviary

Gospel Lesson Antiphon

Breviary Breviary

Antiphon Antiphon

Sexagesima Sunday

Creation, Day 5, Genesis 1: 20–3 Creation, Day 6, Genesis 1: 2 Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, Matthew 20: 12–14 Prophecy of Crucifixion: Sic erunt novissimi primi, Mark 9: 29–36 Creation Day 6: Creation of Man, Genesis 1: 27–31 Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, adapted from Matthew 20: 13–14 Creation Day 6: Animals, Genesis 1: 25–6 Creation, Day 7, Genesis 2: 1–3 Creation of Man version 2, Genesis 2: 4–8 Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, Sic erunt novissimi primi, Matthew 20: 15–16

B 241 B 241

54 54

B 241

54

M 41

54

B 242

54–5

B 242 B 241–2

55 55

B 242–3 B 243

55 55

B 243

55

Journey to Jerusalem, Luke 9: 51–6 Garden of Eden, Genesis 2: 9–14 Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, Sic erunt novissimi primi, Matthew 20: 15–16 Sic erunt novissimi primi, Mark 9: 34 Sic erunt novissimi primi, Matthew 20: 16

M 41 B 243-4

67 55

B 243 B 244 B 244

55 55 55

Missal

Gospel

Parable of the Sower, Luke 8: 4–15

M 42

Breviary Breviary

Gospel Lesson

B 247 B 245–6

Breviary Breviary Breviary

Lesson Lesson Lesson

Parable of the Sower, Luke 8: 4–15 Noah’s Flood: God decides to send the Flood, Genesis 5: 32, 6: 1–8 Gregory the Great on Parable of the Sower Noah’s Ark, Genesis 6: 9–22; 7: 1–12 Noah’s Flood, adapted from Genesis 7: 13–18

Breviary Breviary

Lesson Antiphon

B 246–7

Breviary Breviary

Antiphon Responsory

Breviary

Responsory

Chrysostom on the Fall of Man Noah’s Flood, rainbow, Genesis 9: 13 slightly rearranged Parable of the Sower, Luke 8: 4–5 Noah’s Flood, Genesis 6: 13–14; 7: 7, 12–13, 16–22; 8:1–5, 8, 11 Noah’s Flood: return of the dove, Genesis 8: 8–11

Sexagesima Week

Breviary

Responsory

Breviary

Responsory

Sexagesima, Feria 2

Breviary Breviary

Lesson Antiphon

Sexagesima, Feria 3

Breviary

Lesson

58–9, 61, 67 59

48, 58–9, 61, 66 59 59–60

B 247–9 B 251–4 B 254–5

B 244 B 250 B 245–8

59–61, 66 58, 61 58 59 58–9

B 248

61

B 249

59, 62

B 249

61

Noah’s Ark, Genesis 6: 9–15 Parable of the Sower, Luke 8: 4–5

B 251 B 250

59–60 59

Noah’s Ark, Genesis 6: 16–22

B 252

60

Noah’s Flood, Genesis 8: 20–1; 9: 7, 9, 13–15; 6: 2, 22 Noah’s Flood, rainbow, ponam arcum, Genesis 9: 13

221

LITURGICAL INDEX

Sexagesima, Feria 4

Breviary

Lesson

Sexagesima, Feria 5

Breviary

Lesson

Sexagesima, Feria 6

Missal

Gospel

Breviary

Lesson

Quinquagesima

Breviary

Lessons

Quinquagesima Sunday

Missal

Gospel

Missal

Gospel

Breviary Breviary

Lesson Lesson

Breviary

Lesson

Breviary Breviary Breviary

Antiphon Antiphon Antiphon

Breviary Breviary Breviary Breviary Breviary Breviary

Responsory Responsory Responsory Responsory Responsory Responsory

Breviary

Responsory

Quinquagesima Week

Breviary Breviary Breviary

Responsory Responsory Responsory

Quinquagesima, Feria 2

Breviary Breviary

Lesson Antiphon

Ash Wednesday

Missal

Gospel

Breviary

Lesson

Quinquagesima, Feria 5

Breviary

Lesson

Quinquagesima, Feria 6

Breviary

Lesson

Noah’s Ark, Genesis 7: 1–4

B 253

59–60

Noah’s Ark, Genesis 7: 5–12

B 253–4

59–60

Second Coming: linked with Noah’s Flood, Luke 17: 20–37 Noah’s Flood, adapted from Genesis 7: 13–18

M 42 48, 62, 67 B 254-5 59–60

Abraham, Genesis 11–13

B 255–69

Christ predicts his Passion, Luke 18: 31–43 (same Gospel as below) Healing of blind man, Luke 18: 31–43

M 43 M 43

Genealogy of Abraham, Genesis 11: 27–33 Chrysostom on the faith of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac Gregory the Great on the healing of the blind man Healing of blind man, Luke 18: 31–43, adapted Christ foretells Passion, Luke 18: 31 Abraham and Three Angels: Dum staret Abraham, Genesis 18: 1–2; 2–3, adapted Abraham sent to Canaan, Genesis 12: 1–5 Abraham and Melchizedek, Genesis 14: 18–19 Abraham and Three Angels, Genesis 18: 1–3 Abraham’s covenant, Genesis 17: 7 Abraham’s descendants, Genesis 15: 5–6 Sodom and Gomorrah, Genesis 18: 20, 32; 19: 24, 28, 29 Healing of blind man, Luke 18: 35–42

62

48, 62

48, 62–3, 67, 141 63

B 255–6 B 257–8

63

B 258–9 B 259, 261 B 261

– 63 63

B 255 B 256 B 256 B 256 B 257 B 257, 260

63 63 63 63 63 63

B 259 B 259

63 63

Abraham and Isaac, Genesis 22: 1–17 Death of Abraham, Genesis 25: 8–9 Abraham and the Three Angels, adapted from Genesis 18: 1–3

B 260 B 260

48, 63, 66

B 260

63

Abraham sent to Canaan, Genesis 12: 1–5 Healing of blind man, Luke 18: 38, 41

B 262–3 B 263

63 63

M 48

68

B 264

63

Abraham in Egypt, Genesis 12: 9–16

B 266–7

64

Plagues, and Abraham leaves Egypt, Genesis 12: 17–13: 4

B 267–8

64

Do not store up treasure on earth, Matthew 6: 16–21 Abraham passes through Canaan, Genesis 12: 5–8

222

LITURGICAL INDEX

Quinquagesima, Saturday

Breviary

Lesson

Quadragesima Sunday

Abraham and Lot, Genesis 13: 5–11

Missal

Gospel

Temptation, Matthew 4: 1–11

Missal Breviary

Epistle Antiphon

Nolo mortem peccatoris

Troubles of ministry, 2 Corinthians 6: 1–10

Responsory Responsory

4

Lent 1, Feria 2 Missal

Gospel

Lent 1, Ember Wednesday Missal

Lesson

Lent 1, Ember Friday Missal

Lesson

Lent 1, Ember Saturday

64

M 52 48, 66, 68–9, 71, 73, 85 M 51 68, 85

3

… nolo mortem peccatoris … In die quando venerit … Second Coming, blend of Matthew 26 and Dies irae

B 286, 321 B 278

76 76

Pr 147

62

Last Judgement, Matthew 25: 31–46

M 53

adapted from Ezekiel 33: 11

Breviary Process.

B 268–9

62, 68, 77, 85

Moses on Sinai, Exodus 24: 12–18

M 54

66

Anima quae peccaverit, Ezekiel 18: 20–8

M 56

76

M 60

Missal

Gospel

Transfiguration, Matthew 17: 1–9

Missal

Lesson

Moses, Israel and the Law, Deuteronomy 26: 15–19

M 57

66

Jacob steals Esau’s birthright, Genesis 27: 1–10

B 297-8

66

Jacob and Esau continued, Genesis 27: 11–46; 28: 1–4

B 303-10

66

B 321

76

66, 68, 73, 79, 85

Lent 2, Sunday Breviary

Lesson

Lent 2, Week Breviary

Lesson

Lent 3, Sunday Breviary

Antiphon

Nolo mortem peccatoris, adapted from Ezekiel 33: 11

Lent 3, Feria 6 Missal

Gospel

Lent 3, Saturday

Woman of Samaria, John 4: 4–42

M 70–1

75, 86

M 71 66, 68, 75–6, 86, 175

Missal

Gospel

Woman taken in adultery, John 8: 1–11

Missal

Lesson Communion Prayer

M 71

75, 86

Missal

Susanna and the Elders, Daniel 3: 1–9, 15–17, 19–30, 34–62

Breviary

Antiphon

John 8: 10–11, slightly altered Woman taken in adultery, John 8: 6–7

M 71 B 327

76 76

Moses, Exodus 1: 1–4, 8–12 Woman taken in adultery, John 8: 10–11

B 329–30 B 327

Lent 4, Sunday

Breviary Breviary

Lesson Antiphon

Nemo te condemnavit, mulier? … Vade, et jam amplius noli peccare,

3

48, 66 76

Vivo ego dicit Dominus Deus nolo mortem impii sed ut revertatur impius a via sua et vivat.

4

And all following Sundays until Palm Sunday.

223

LITURGICAL INDEX

Lent 4, Week Breviary

Lesson

Lent 4, Feria 4

Missal Missal Missal

Gospel Lesson Lesson

Lent 4, Feria 6 Missal

Gospel

Missal

Lesson

Lent 4, Saturday

Missal Missal

Gospel Lesson

Passion Sunday Breviary

Chapter

Palm Sunday (procession)

Moses, Exodus 1: 11, 14–22; 2: 1–25; 3: 1–6

B 336–43

Healing of man born blind, John 9: 1–38 Cleansing of sin, Ezekiel 36: 23–8 Though your sins be as scarlet, Isaiah 1: 16–19

M 75 M 74 M 75

M 77 66, 68, 75, 78, 82–3, 86, 141 M 76 78 Elijah raises widow’s son, 1 Kings 17: 17–24 Light of the World, John 8: 12–20 God the Comforter of Israel, Isaiah 49: 8–15

M 77 M 77

78 78

Christus assistens, Hebrews 9: 11–12

B 351

141

M 85–89, Pr 148–51

Antiphon

Entry into Jerusalem, based on Matthew 21: 1–9, John 12: 12–15

Missal, Process.

Antiphon

Raising of Lazarus, see:

Missal, Process.

Antiphon

Missal, Process. Missal Missal, Process. Missal, Process. Missal, Process. Missal, Process. Missal Missal, Process. Missal

Responsory

John 12: 13, Matthew 21: 8–9; Mark 11: 8–9, conflated Ex ore infantium, Psalm 8: 3

Antiphon Antiphon

Ante sex dies, based on John 12: 1, 12–13 Prima … die azymorum,

Responsory Responsory

Dominus Jesus ante sex dies, 5 based on John 12: 1 Cogitaverunt ergo/autem, John 12: 10

Responsory

Cum audisset turba, John 12: 12–13,

Missal

Antiphon

Missal

Gospel 2 (Process.) Antiphon

Missal, Process.

5

see below

Dominus Jesus, Testimonium ergo: Convenerunt autem Pueri Hebraeorum

Matthew 26: 17–19

Antiphon

86 86 86

Raising of Lazarus, John 11: 1–45

Missal, Process.

Gospel 1 Responsory

48, 66

Luke 19: 37, adapted Entry into Jerusalem, John 12: 12–19 Cum audisset populus, adapted from John 12:12 Ecce Rex tuus venit (York) from Cum audisset populus, Matthew 21: 5, Zachariah 9: 9 En rex venit (Sarum), Matthew 21: 5, Zachariah 9: 9 Entry into Jerusalem, Matthew 21: 1–9:

Cum appropinquasset Cum appropinquaret, based on Matthew 21: 1–3, 7–9; with Luke 19: 37

These three if necessary; see also below.

224

132–3, 135

M 87, PR 149 M 85, B 366, Pr 148

141

131, 135

M 85, Pr 148

131, 138

M 86, Pr 148 132 M 86, 132 Pr 149 M 86–7; Pr 149 M 87, Pr 149 M 86, Pr 149 M 84 M 86, Pr 151

132, 141

132 132 132 134

M 86, Not PR

135

SM 259

135

M 86 M 87 Pr 149–50

132 133

LITURGICAL INDEX Missal, Process. Missal, Process. Missal, Process. Missal, Process. Missal, Process. Missal, Process. Missal, Process. Missal, Process. Missa,l Process. Missal, Process. Missal, Process. Missal, Process.

Responsory / Antiphon Responsory

Dominus Jesus ante sex dies, John 12: 1

Responsory

Testimonium ergo, John 12: 11

Responsory

Cum audisset turba, John 12: 12–13

Antiphon

Convenerunt autem, John 12: 9

Responsory

Collegerunt Pontifices, John 11: 47–8

Responsory

Unus autem ex ipsis, Caiaphas,

Hymn

Gloria, laus, et honor,

Responsory

M 88, Pr 151

Antiphon

Ingrediente Domino, Summary of Entry: crossed with Matthew 21: 15 Ave Rex noster (Salutation to the Cross)

Responsory

Circumdederunt me viri mendaces, adapted

Responsory

Benedictus qui venit, Matthew 21: 9

M 89, Pr 151 134 M 89, Pr 148, 151

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus

M 89

135

Missal Breviary

M 90 M 90 B 366

136 136 141

M 97 M 97

174 173

M 101

173

John 11: 49–50, 53

Theodulfus of Orléans

Collect Passion reading Gospel Chapter

Missal

Epistle

Missal Missal

Gospel Gospel (Vespers)

Good Friday

Passion reading

Missal Process. Breviary Breviary Breviary Missal Missal

Hymn Antiphon Responsory Trope Trope

Holy Saturday, Matins Breviary

Antiphon

Christ forgives Good Thief, Luke 23: 43

Planctus Mariae 6 Stabat Mater, ?Jacopone da Todi

Elevamini porte eternales, Psalm 23: 7–10 (AV Psalm 24)

6 7

7

Not in York Missal. Not in York Missal.

225

132 132 132 133 133

134, 139

134, 140–1

135, 141

Lord’s Supper (including words of Institution), 1 Corinthians 11: 20–32 Washing of feet, John 13: 1–15 Washing of feet, and John’s account of Last Supper, John 13, 14

Astiterunt reges, Psalm 2: 2

132

M 88, Pr 151

St Matthew Passion, Matthew 26: 1–75, 27: 1–6 Conspiracy, Matthew 27: 62–67 Christus assistens, Hebrews 9: 11–12

St John Passion, John 18: 1–40, 19:1–37 Improperia, Micah 6: 3–4, Jeremiah 2: 21, Isaiah 5: 4 Pange, lingua, Venantius Fortunatus

132

133, 136, 140

from Psalm 108 (AV 109)

Maundy Thursday

Missal

Cogitaverunt ergo, John 12: 10

Luke 19: 37 adapted

Palm Sunday (Mass)

Missal Missal

M 86–7; Pr 149 M 87, Pr 149 M 87, Pr 149 M 86, Pr 149 M 87, Pr 149 M 87, Pr 150 M 87–8, Pr 150 M 88, Pr 150

M 102–3

142, 144, 150, 156

M 105; Pr 156–8

87, 89, 144, 149

Pr 161, B 345

146–7, 152 150 155 38, 80, 118–19, 143, 152–4 – 154

M 389 M 390

B 397

157–8

LITURGICAL INDEX

Easter Vigil Missal

Gospel

Easter Sunday Missal Process. Missal

Gospel Responsory Trope

Three Maries visit the sepulchre, Matthew 28: 1–10

M 124

162

M 126 Pr 171

162 159

Post-Resurrection Appearances, see below

M 128–36

163

Pilgrims to Emmaus, Luke 24: 13–35

M 128

163

M 128

162

Three Maries visit the sepulchre, Mark 16: 1–7

Christus resurgens, Romans 6: 9 Quem quaeritis, 8 John 18: 5 (Passion); combined with Matthew 28: 2

Easter Week Missal

Gospel

Easter Monday

Missal Missal

Gospel Offertory

– 109, 142, 156, 158, 161–3, 201

Quem quaeritis, John 18: 5 (Passion); combined with Matthew 28: 2

Easter Tuesday Missal

Gospel

Missal

Gradual

Easter Week, Feria 4 Missal

Gospel

Easter Week, Feria 5 Missal

Gospel

Easter Week, Feria 6 Missal

Gospel

Easter Week, Saturday Missal

Gospel

Low Sunday Missal

Gospel

Easter 3, Sunday Missal

Gospel

Easter 4, Sunday Missal

Gospel

Post-Resurrection Appearances, at Jerusalem, Luke 24: 36–47 Quem quaeritis, John 18: 5 (Passion); combined with Matthew 28: 2

M 129

163

M 129

162

Post-Resurrection Appearances, Sea of Tiberias, John 21: 1–14

M 131

163

Christ appears to Mary Magdalen, John 20: 11–18

M 132

163

Post-Resurrection Appearances, Galilee, Matthew 28: 16–20

M 135

163

Mary Magdalen shows empty tomb to Peter, John 20: 1–9

M 136

163

Doubting Thomas, John 20: 19–31

M 139

163

Christ prophesies the joy of his Resurrection: Tristicia implevit, John 16: 16–22

M 142

168

Coming of the Holy Ghost prophesied, John 16: 5–15

M 143

167

Pr 186

166

Nisi ego abiero, adapted from John 16: 7 Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis

B 475 Pr 186

167 166

Ascension, Mark 16: 14–20

M 148

165

Easter 4, Feria 3 (Rogation Tuesday) Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis Process. Litany Ascension Vigil, Vespers Breviary Process.

Antiphon Litany

Ascension Day Missal 8

Gospel

Not in York Missal.

226

LITURGICAL INDEX

Ascendo ad patrem, John 20: 17

Gregory the Great on the Ascension

M 147 B 480 B 478–9

165 166 165

Antiphon

Nisi ego abiero, adapted from John 16: 7

B 497–8

167

Missal

Gospel

Breviary

Hymn

Jesus foretells coming of the Holy Ghost, John 14: 23–31 Veni creator spiritus, Unknown

M 153 B 503

167 166–7

Peter’s mission to the Gentiles, Acts 10: 42–8

M 154

167

Effundam de spiritu meo, Joel 2: 28–32

M 161

168

M 239

75, 178

Annunciation, Luke 1: 26–38

M2 27 M2 27 M2 27

93 22 22

Missal Breviary Breviary

Epistle Antiphon Lesson

Pentecost, Vigil, Vespers Breviary

Pentecost

Ascension, Acts 1: 1–11

Pentecost, Feria 2 (Whit Monday) Missal

Lesson

Pentecost, Saturday after Missal

Lesson

Ember Friday in September Missal

Gospel

Christ in the house of Simon the Leper, Luke 7: 36–50

FEASTS OF THE SAINTS

Annunciation, 25 March

Missal Missal Missal

Gospel Tract Offertory

Candlemas, 2 February

Missal Missal Missal Missal, Process. Missal, Process. Missal Missal

Gospel Lesson Prayer Antiphon 10

Haec dicit Dominus, Malachi 3: 1–4 Domine J C qui illuminas omnem hominem 9 Lumen ad revelationem, Luke 2: 32

Purification, Luke 2: 22–32

M2 21 125 M2 20 122, 125 M2 17 122 M2 18; Pr 195

Antiphon

Nunc dimittis, Luke 2: 29–32

M2 19, Pr 195

Introit Gradual

Suscepimus, Deus, Psalm 47: 10 (AV 48: 9) Suscepimus, Deus, Psalm 47: 10 (AV 48: 9)

M2 20 M2 20

Christ in the house of Simon the Leper, Luke 7: 36–50

M2 67

St Mary Magdalen, 22 July Missal

9 10

Ave Maria, Luke 1: 28, 42 Ave Maria, Luke 1: 28, 42

Gospel

At blessing of the candles. At lighting of the candles.

227

122, 125

122, 124–6, 128–30 122 122

75, 178

Index

1381, crises (‘Peasants’ Revolt’), 181 Ages of Man, 9, 49, 60 Ages of the World, 50, 60 Anderson, M.D., 138, 140 Antwerp, Van der Weyden, ‘Seven Sacraments’ altarpiece, 19, 153, 175 Apocrypha. See biblical apocrypha Aquinas, Saint Thomas (c.1225–1274) Summa Theologiae, 94, 182, 195 arma Christi. See iconography, Instruments of the Passion Ars moriendi, 79, 82 Arundel, Thomas (1353–1414), archbishop of York (1388) and Canterbury (1396), 16 Constitutions (1409), 16, 202 De heretico comburendo (1406), 15 dedicatee of Love’s Mirror (1410), 16–17, 97 opposes condemnation of Scrope, 191, 200 Ashby St Ledgers (Northants), Blessed Virgin Mary and St Leodegarius, wall painting, 174 Augustine of Hippo (354–430), Saint, City of God, 53, 62 Confessions, 53 on Fall of the Angels, 53 sermons, 49, 54, 94, 118 on John’s Gospel, 76, 80–1 on the Epiphany, 107, 118 Ave Maria. See liturgy; INDEX OF REFERENCES TO LITURGICAL MATERIAL; lay instruction, catechesis Ayscoughfee Hall (Lincs) Seven Sacraments glass, 170 Badingham (Suffolk), St John the Baptist, font, 178 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 181 Barking Abbey (Essex), dramatic Easter ceremonies, 158 Beadle, Richard, 27, 35, 120, 174 Bede, the Venerable, Saint (c.673–735), sermons, 104 Bethlehem, 104, 106

Beverley (Yorks), Guild of St Mary Purification ceremony, 124 Bible. See also biblical narrative; biblical characters; biblical exegesis; biblical prophecy. and liturgy, 31. See INDEX OF REFERENCES TO LITURGICAL MATERIAL in English, 15, 31 Latin Vulgate, 15 Biblia Pauperum. See biblical exegesis, biblical typology biblical apocrypha, 8 characters Angels, Nine Orders, 50, 53 Antichrist, 74 Elijah, 73–4 Good and Rebel Angels, 35, 50, 53, 58 Longeus (Longinus), 22, 152, 154 Midwives at Nativity, 95, 193 Moses, 73 ox and ass at Nativity, 95, 97–9 St Anne, 124 Fall of the Angels, 8, 28, 50, 53–4, 57 Gospel of Nicodemus, 73 Harrowing of Hell, 25, 28, 65, 69, 73–4, 82, 98, 136–7, 157–8 John the Baptist and Christ meet as infants, 128 Legend of the Cross, 148 Cross refuses to fit Christ, 148 Limbo of the Fathers, 73, 98, 157 Nativity, light, 101 Noah’s wife’s disobedience, 57, 60–1 Trial before Pilate, supernatural events, 195 Virgin Mary additional biography, 9 revisits scenes of Passion, 143 biblical characters ‘Daughters of Jerusalem’, 143 ‘Saint Veronica’, 143 Abel, 35, 52, 56–8, 66 Abraham, 35, 48, 50, 62–6, 89

229

INDEX Lazarus, 35, 68, 75, 77–82, 86, 132, 141 Lot, 63 Lucifer, 4, 50, 54, 127, 205 Magi (Three Kings), 25–6, 37, 42, 93–4, 106, 108–19, 179 man born blind healed by Christ, 86 Martha, sister of Lazarus, 79–80 Mary Cleophas, 179, See also Three Maries. Mary Magdalen, 75, 79, 130, 162–4, 178–9, See also Three Maries. Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus, 75, 79–80 identified with Mary Magdalen, 75, 79, 178 Mary Salome, 179, See also Three Maries. Mary, the Blessed Virgin, 8–9, 11, 14, 21–4, 26–7, 35, 37–8, 61, 65, 80, 93–104, 107, 112–14, 118-28, 143, 152–4, 161, 166–8, 177, 179, 193, 203 in Royal Entry, 202 Melchizedek, 63 Moses, 35, 50, 64–6, 73–4 Mothers of the Innocents, 38, 110, 119, 152 Nicodemus, 157, 179 Noah, 32, 35, 43, 48, 50, 58–62, 66–7 Noah’s sons, 58 Noah’s wife, 57, 60–62, See also biblical apocrypha. Old Testament Patriarchs, 157–8 Old Testament Prophets, 49, 135, 157–8 Peter the Apostle, 137–8, 163–4, 166–8 Pharaoh, 35, 64–5 Pharaoh (Abraham’s), 66 Philip the Apostle, 138 Pilate, 21, 27, 71, 130, 151, 164, 179, 182, 194–201 Pilate’s wife, 69, 195, 199 Pilgrims to Emmaus, 163–4 Priests and Pharisees, 133 Rebecca, 64 Sarah, wife of Abraham, 66 Sarah, wife of Tobias, 177 Satan. See Devil Scribes and Pharisees, 77, 182 Serpent in Eden, 57, 61, 177 Shepherds, 24, 93, 95, 110, 162 Simeon, 26, 120, 122–8, 153, 193 Simon of Cyrene, 143 Simon the Leper, 35, 75

Adam, 35, 49, 54–8, 60, 74, 148, 158, 176–7 Angel at sacrifice of Isaac, 64 Angel of the Annunciation to the Shepherds, 95 Angel of the Expulsion, 57 Angel of the Resurrection, 157, 159–62 angels at Temptation, 70 Anna the prophetess, 123–5, 127 Annas, 130, 164, 182, 192–4, 196–9, 201 Apostles, 76–7, 139, 161, 163–8 Archangel Gabriel, 93–4 ass, Abraham’s, 64 Entry into Jerusalem, 64, 132–3, 137–9, 141 Balaam, 101, 114–15 Barabbas, 199 blind man healed by Christ, 48, 62–3, 67, 141 Caiaphas, 130, 133, 164, 182, 192, 194–6, 198–9, 201 Cain, 35, 56–8, 60, 66 Centurion at Crucifixion, 201 Delilah, 60 Devil, 46, 53, 59, 65, 69, 70–1, 79, 158, 165, 182, 194, See also theology, Devil and devils Doctors in the Temple, 35–7, 40–1, 66, 77, 126, 178, 182, 192 Elias. See Elijah Elijah, 73–4, 78 Elizabeth, 93, 128 Eve, 35, 49, 54–7, 60, 158, 176–7 Good Thief, 155 Ham, son of Noah, 43 Herod, 25, 64, 87, 91, 93, 110–11, 115–19, 130, 195, 198 ’raging’, 93, 109, 110–12, 115 Herod’s soldiers, 119 Holy Innocents, 131 Isaac, 35, 48, 63–6, 89 James the Apostle, 167 Jews in episode of woman taken in adultery, 76 John the Baptist, 43, 105, 113, 128, 170–3 patron saint of Richard II, 113 John the Evangelist, 143, 152–3, 163, 167, 179 Joseph, husband of Virgin Mary, 23–4, 26, 37–8, 93, 95–6, 98, 101, 103, 118, 124–5, 177 Joseph of Arimathea, 157, 178–9 Judas, 27, 130, 196 Lamech, 60

230

INDEX Simeon’s embrace of the Christchild, 127 Glossa ordinaria, 79 history of the Devil, 69, 79, 158, 182 biblical narrative, 1, 4–5, 8–9, 20, 31, 33, 87 in liturgy, 34, 36, 72, 94, See also liturgy, Bible readings and quotations, narrative ordering Life of Christ, 37, 42, 45, 73, 105, 198 Adoration of the Magi, 25, 93, 102, 106, 108–17 Adoration of the Shepherds, 24, 93, 117 adult life, 8, 27, 34, 37, 106 Annunciation, 93 Annunciation to the Shepherds, 94–5, 102, 104–5, 111 Arrest, 196 Ascension, 165 Baptism, 42–3, 46, 66, 68, 107, 128, 169–71 Betrayal, 130 Burial, 89, 151, 155, 157, 178 Calvary, 143, 148, 152 childhood, 40 Christ in the house of Simon the Leper, 75 Christ predicts his Passion, 54, 62, 174 Christ predicts his Resurrection, 62 Christ questioned about coming of the kingdom, 62 Conspiracy against Christ, 133 Crucifixion, 64–5, 130, 133, 143, 152, 165, 169–70 Death of Christ, 153 Deposition, 151–2, 155 Disputation with the Doctors, 36–7, 40–1, 46, 66 Dream of Pilate’s wife, 69, 195, 199 Entry into Jerusalem, 27, 62, 64, 90, 130–41, 158 Flight into Egypt, 93, 110, 117–19, 145 forgives the Good Thief, 155 forty days in wilderness, 65 Incarnation, 105 Joseph’s trouble, 93 Journey of the Magi, 94, 117 Journey to Jerusalem, 48, 62–3, 67, 132–4 Last Supper, 130, 165, 169, 173, 175 Marriage at Cana, 46, 66, 177

Soldiers at the Crucifixion, 144, 150 Soldiers at the Resurrection, 157, 159, 201 Susanna, 75, 86 the Damned, 28 the Saved, 27–8 Thomas the Apostle, 163–4 Three Angels who foretell birth of Isaac, 63 Three Maries, 143, 152–3, 156–9, 162–3, See also Mary Cleophas, Mary Magdalen, Mary Salome. Tobias, 177 walk in Corpus Christi processions, 10, 92, 191–2 woman of Samaria, 75, 86 identified with Mary Magdalen, 75 woman taken in adultery, 35, 68, 75–7, 86, 175, 182 identified with Mary Magdalen, 75 woman with alabastron of ointment, 75 identified with Mary Magdalen, 178–9 biblical exegesis, 71–2, 79, 153, 158, 181 anagogical, 51, 69, 76, 79, 88–9, 161, 175, 177 biblical typology, 9, 44, 49, 51, 56, 62–5, 78, 89, 104, 165, 170, 173, 177 Biblia Pauperum, 65 etymologies Bethlehem, 104 epiphany, 42, 106–7 Hypapante, 127 three names for the Purification, 126 figural, 9, 49, 56, 89, 142 Adam and Christ, 73 Burning Bush, 65 Candlemas candles, 123 Herod as unenlightened Jews, 117 Labourers in the Vineyard, 52 Lamb of God, 125 Lazarus, 80– 82 Magi, 106, 111, 117 gifts, 115–16, 179 Martha, sister of Lazarus, 79–80 Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus, 79–80 Moses’ rod, 65 Noah’s Ark, 59, 60 Red Sea, 65 Shepherds represent the Jews, 111, 117

231

INDEX Mary Magdalen at the empty tomb, 164 Mary Magdalen meets Resurrected Christ, 163 Mary Magdalen, Peter, and John visit the tomb, 163 Massacre of the Innocents, 93, 117–19, 152 Maundy Thursday, 173 Ministry, 42, 44, 48, 66, 68, 73, 74, 76–7, 83 miracles, 44, 79, 137, 141 heals blind man, 62, 141 heals man born blind, 86 Nativity, 8, 23–5, 49, 66, 68, 87, 93–106, 107, 115, 117, 129 iconography, 24 Nativity to Passion, 35, 45 parables, 48, 60, 62 Labourers in the Vineyard, 49, 52, 55–6, 58, 67 Prodigal Son, 86 Sower, 58–9, 61, 67 Passion, 4, 8, 9, 20, 26–7, 48–9, 62–4, 81–2, 87, 105, 133, 142– 57, 164, 169 Pentecost, 43, 173 post-Resurrection Appearances, 130, 161, 163 Purification and Presentation in the Temple, 93, 106, 118–29, 153, 193 Raising of Lazarus, 66, 75–83, 86, 132, 141 Resurrection, 8, 66, 68, 73–4, 77, 82, 89, 130, 155–65, 168, 201 Soldiers draw lots for Christ’s garment, 150 star at Epiphany, 94, 106, 108, 111, 114–16, 119 star at Nativity, 95, 101, 107–8, 115 Temptation, 48, 65–6, 68–73, 79, 85 Three Maries visit the sepulchre, 156, 158–9, 163 Transfiguration, 66, 73–4, 79, 85 Elijah and Moses, 73 Trial before Caiaphas, 130 Trial before Pilate, 130, 196–9 Trial sequence, 76, 192 Via Crucis, 130, 142–3, 145 Visitation, 128 Washing of Feet, 173–4 woman of Samaria, 75, 86

woman taken in adultery, 66, 75–7, 86 woman with alabastron of ointment, 75, 178–9 New Testament Descent of the Holy Ghost, 166 Fall of the Angels, sources, 53 Marriage of Joseph and Mary, 177 Pentecost, 172 Old Testament Abraham, 63, 66 sacrifice of Isaac, 48, 63–5, 89 Adam names animals, 55 building of Solomon’s Temple, 148 Cain and Abel, 56–8 Creation, 49–56 Creation of Eve, 55–6, 176 Creation of Man, 55, 117 Exodus from Egypt, 65, 72, 117 Expulsion from Eden, 56–7 Fall of Man, 55–6, 59, 61, 69–70, 117, 165 Fall of the Angels (Isaiah), 53 Garden of Eden, 52, 55, 61 Marriage of Adam and Eve, 176–7 Marriage of Tobias and Sarah, 177 Moses, 64–6, 74 Noah’s Flood, 43, 58–62 Sodom and Gomorrah, 63 Susanna and the Elders, 86 biblical prophecy, 62, 104, 114, 141 Balaam’s star, 101, 114–15 Habakkuk, 98 Isaiah, 46–7, 49, 67, 78, 85–6, 98–9, 101, 141 Joel, 168 Malachi, 122, 125 of Nativity, 23, 114–15, 192 Psalms, of the Magi, 108 Simeon’s ‘sword of sorrow’, 153 Zephaniah, 123 Birgitta of Sweden, Saint (c.1303–1373), Revelations, vision of Nativity, 24, 94, 96–7, 105 Blickling Homilies (11th century) Lenten sermon, 72 Bridget of Sweden, Saint. See Birgitta, Saint Bruges, procession of the Holy Blood, 192 Calais, 14 calendar. See liturgy, calendar Cambridge University, 188 Canterbury (Kent) archbishops

232

INDEX Feast. See liturgy, calendar, Corpus Christi Guild, 9, 11–15, 17–18, 27, 39, 83, 188 plays, 2, 7, 87, See also Coventry Cycle, York Cycle. procession, 10–14, 20, 90, 92, 109, 131, 140, 188, 191, See processions, liturgical, Corpus Christi. pageants, 7, 92 torches, 14 Valencia, 10, 92, 140, 192 shrine, 11, 14 Corpus Christi Cycle. See Corpus Christi Plays Council of Lambeth (1281), 38 Council of Trent (1537), 41 Coventry Cycle, 1, 8, 120 pageants Shearmen and Taylors, 94–5 Weavers, 126, 192 Coventry, Midsummer Show, 8 Cowen, Janet, 96 Craig, Hardin, 49, 53 Creed. See liturgy; lay instruction, catechesis cross (liturgical object). See liturgy Cumberland, 187 Day of Judgement. See Last Judgement; theology, Christ as Judge, Second Coming de Certeau, Michel, 91 devotional images. See iconography; lay devotion Digby play Candlemas Day and the Killing of the Children, 124 Dives and Pauper, 121, 208 Dobson, Barrie (R.B.), 184, 200 Doddiscombsleigh (Devon), St Michael, Seven Sacraments glass, 178 Doomsday. See Last Judgement Dream of the Rood, 146 Duffy, Eamon, 20, 29, 83, 123, 131, 135–6, 140–1, 150, 161, 178 Durham Abbey Church (Cathedral), 156

Arundel, Thomas (1396), 16–17, 97, 191, 200, 202 Pecham, John (1279), 38 Canterbury Cathedral stained glass, Deposition, 179 Capgrave, John, Abbreviacion of Cronicles, 189, 191, 199 Cartmel Fell (Cumbria), St Anthony’s, Seven Sacraments glass, 170, 176, 178 Castle of Perseverance, 69 catechesis. See lay instruction catechumens. See lay instruction; liturgy, Lent Cawley, Arthur C., 40 Charles VII, king of France (1422–1461), as Magus, 114 Chaucer, Geoffrey, Canterbury Tales, 181 Miller’s Tale, John the carpenter, 32–3 Chester Cycle, 1, 8, 120 Early Banns, 137 pageant wagons ‘Jerusalem’, 137 pageants Cain and Abel, 58 Christ and the Doctors, 192 Moses, 66 Noah, 60 Purification, 126 Chester Plays. See Chester Cycle Chester, Midsummer Show, 8 Chevalier, Étienne, 113 Christian history, 9, 51–3, 56, 66, 97 Chrysostom, Saint John (c.347–407), 94 Commentary on John, 80 sermons, 58, 61, 63 Church's year. See liturgy, calendar Clanchy, Michael, 32 confraternities, 10 religious, 9, 11, 13, 184, 188, 194, See also Corpus Christi Guild. Holy Trinity and BVM, 11, 13 St Christopher, 39, 191 St George, 191 Constantine the Great (?274–337), Emperor of Rome, 142 corporal acts of mercy. See Corporal Works of Mercy Corporal Works of Mercy. See also iconography; lay devotion; lay instruction, catechesis.

Durham Ritual

ceremony of Deposition and Elevation of the Cross, 156 Priory, bequest to, 186 East Anglia Seven Sacraments fonts, 170 Easter Sepulchre. See liturgy, liturgical objects Edmund of East Anglia, king and martyr, 113 education. See lay instruction

corpus Christi

‘Body of Christ’, 129, 154 Corpus Christi, 12, 18, 26, 66, 97, 103, 129, 140 and York Cycle, 7, 9, 10–29, 31, 169, 188

233

INDEX Horner, Olga, 71, 189, 197, 201–2 Host. See sacraments, Eucharist; theology, Real Presence Hughes, Andrew, 90 Hull (Yorks), 185, 188 iconography, 5 Adoration of the Magi, 112–13 and civic ceremonial, 112 and Wilton Diptych, 113 Annas and Caiaphas, 193 Annunciation to the Shepherds, 94 Baptism, 171 biblical sequences Books of Hours, 35 stained-glass windows, 35, 49 biblical typology, 65 Burial of Christ, 179 catechism, 39 Christ as Man of Sorrows, 20 Christ-child as shining infant, 24, 96, 101 Christ on the Cross, 144, 151, 155, 169 Corporal Works of Mercy, 39 Crucifixion, 147, 170–1 death and decay, 82 divine light, 24, 70, 101, 104, 122, 166 Easter Sepulchre, 157 Entry into Jerusalem, 140 Five Wounds, 20, 164–5, 169, 170 Instruments of the Passion, 147–8, 152 Last Supper, 174 Life of Christ sequences, 179 marriage of Adam and Eve, 177 Mary Magdalen, 180 Mass, 19 ’Mass of Pope Gregory’, 19 Nativity, 24, 94, 96, 98, 101, 104 Noah’s Ark, 60 Palm Sunday, 140 Pietà, 178–9 Resurrected Christ, 160 sacraments Baptism, 171 Eucharist, 175 Extreme Unction, 178 Marriage, 176 Seven Sacraments, 19, 88, 153, 169, 170 fonts, 170–1, 175 stained glass, 169, 170, 175 imagery, verbal Christ as Light, 97, 101, 106 Presentation in the Temple, 122–3, 125–7 Christ as Sun, 99, 100, 104, 114 Christmas, 108

Edward II, king of England (1307–1327), 112 Edward III, king of England (1327–1377), 112, 186 Edward the Confessor, king of England (1042–1066), 113 Elche. See Elx Elevation lyrics. See Elevation prayers Elevation prayers. See liturgy, paraliturgical activities; York Cycle, Elevation prayers Elx, Alicante Misteri of the Assumption, 193 Eton College (Berks), 143 Eucharist. See sacraments Fairford (Glos), stained glass, 140 Feast of Fools, 181 Februa, Roman festival, 120 Florence convent of San Marco, Fra Angelico’s Last Supper, 174 Epiphany procession, 113 Foucault, Henri, 5 Fouquet, Jean, Hours of Étienne Chevalier, 113 Fourth Lateran Council (1215), 42 Fra Angelico (c.1387–1455), Last Supper, 174 Fulthorp, Sir Willliam, 190 Gascoigne, Sir William (c.1350–1419), Chief Justice of England, 189–91, 200–1 Gaytrick, John, English version of The Lay Folks’ Catechism, 39 Gentile da Fabriano, Journey of the Magi (1423), 113 Glossa ordinaria. See Walafrid Strabo Golden Legend. See Voragine, Jacobus de Gospel harmonies. See Lives of Christ Gregory I, ‘the Great’ (540–604), Pope, 19, 28 Homilies, 49–50, 52, 59–60, 66, 106, 111, 165 Gresham (Norfolk), All Saints, woodcarving, 178 guilds, religious. See confraternities, religious guilds, trade and craft. See York Henry IV, king of England (1399–1413), 189–91, 200 Henry V, king of England (1413–1422), 196, 200 Henry VII, king of England (1485–1509), 21, 203 Hilton, Walter Scale of Perfection, 16

234

INDEX Epiphany, 108, 114 Incarnation, 99, 101 Mary as star, 100, 114 of light, 23–4, 82, 96, 98–101, 104, 108, 114–16, 122 Improperia. See INDEX OF REFERENCES TO LITURGICAL MATERIAL; liturgy, calendar, Good Friday Innocent III (c.1160–1216), Pope, 154 Instruments of the Passion, 146, See also iconography. Isis, cult of, 90 Jacopone da Todi (died c.1306), 154 Jenney, Adeline, 53 Jerome (Hieronymus Eusebius, c.342– 420), Saint, translator of Vulgate, 15, 66 Jerusalem, 90–1, 123, 135, 142–3, 155–6 ‘Jerusalem’ wagon. See York Cycle, pageant wagons Temple, 128, 132, 155 Via Crucis, 136, 142–3 Juliana of Norwich (c.1342–post 1413), Revelations of Divine Love, 105 Justinian I (483–565), emperor of Rome and Byzantium, 120, 123 Kalender of Shepherdes, 79 Kempe, Margery, 123, 136, 143, 151, 158 Ketzel, Martin, of Nuremberg, 143 Kirton in Lindsey (Lincs) Seven Sacraments fresco, 170 Lancashire, 187 Lancastrian dynasty, 191, 194–5, 201 Langland, William Piers Plowman, 148, 158, 181, 214 Laurence, Saint, 123 law abuses, 194, 196, 199, 201 canon law, 181, 196, 199 common law, 198 divine and human law, 37, 182, 195 legal officials, 182, 189–91, 196–201 lex positiva, 60 natural law, 60, 194 offences, 41, 190, 194, 196–9, 201 Old and New Laws, 64, 74–5, 77, 182, 195 New Law, 37, 77 Eucharist replaces Passover, 132, 173 Old Testament ritual, 120–1, 123, 125–6, 132 Ten Commandments, 38–41, 44, 65–6, 74–5, 77, 175, 192 Two Evangelical Precepts, 39–41 penalties

death penalty, 190, 196, 198–200 processes and procedures, 76, 194–202 role of witnesses, 159, 197, 199, 202 statute law, 196–7 lay celebrations Christmas, 97, 106 Corpus Christi, 10, See also Corpus Christi, procession. Epiphany, 106, 109, 113, 116 processions, Florence, Milan, Padua, 113 Twelfth Night, 106, 112 lay devotion, 5, 9, 13 affective piety, 142–3, 161 Corporal Works of Mercy, 27–8, 39, 77, 185 Cross, 146, See also liturgy, ceremonies, Adoration of the Cross. True Cross, 146–8 devotional images, 142–3, 151–3, 155 Eucharist, 9, 13–19, 29, 31, 83, 87, 180 Five Wounds, 28 Instruments of the Passion, 147, 152 Seven Joys and Seven Sorrows of Our Lady, 153 Stations of the Cross, 142 Lay Folks’ Catechism. See Thoresby Lay Folks’ Mass Book, 19, 31 lay instruction, 11, 16, 32–3, 35, 185 catechesis, 33, 39–42, 169, 192 Ave Maria, 39 Creed, 38–9 Paternoster, 39 Seven Corporal Works of Mercy, 38–9, 185 Seven Deadly Sins, 39 Ten Commandments, 39–40, 66, 192 on sacraments, in York Cycle, 175–8 preaching, 15–16, 28, 32–3, 49, 71, 83, 158, 181–2, 188 Lefèbvre, Henri, 91 Leonardo da Vinci, Last Supper, 174 Limoges, 109 literacy, lay, 17, 31–3 literary forms, 69, 71 liturgical drama, 49, 89, 111 Adoration of the Magi, 109 from Limoges, 109 Italy, 113 York Minster, 108

Adoration of the Shepherds York Minster, 108

235

INDEX characters Herod, 109–111 Herod’s soldier, 110 Holy Family, 110 Magi, 110, 111 Midwives, 109 Mothers of the Innocents, 110 Shepherds, 110 Soldiers, 109 Christmas, 26, 34 Easter, 34, 91 Officium Stellae (Rouen), 109

tables of Gospels and Epistles/Lessons Epiphany to Septuagesima, 46–7 Quadragesima to Palm Sunday, 85–6 Septuagesima to Quadragesima, 67 themes, 37, 40, 59, 62, 64, 72, 84 Christmas, 97–104 Epiphany, 107, 111 exile and return, 117 Fall and Redemption of Man, 33, 52, 69, 107, 172 last shall be first, 55–6 Lenten, 42, 56, 69, 71–6, 79, 82–3 Baptism, 42 instruction, 42 Ministry, 48 nature of Christ, 68 penitential, 42, 56, 69, 76 Septuagesima to Quadragesima foretell the Passion, 48 Ministry, 48, 66 parables, 48 thematic construction in Breviary, 56 liturgy, calendar, 5, 26, 32–4, 87, 93–4, 169 Advent, 73, 93 Annunciation, 22, 35, 93–4 celebrated in Advent and 25 March, 93 Ascension Day, 165–6 Ash Wednesday, 48, 50, 56, 63, 66–7, 72, 121 Candlemas (Purification and Presentation), 26, 27, 93, 106, 118–28, See also liturgy, ceremonies, paraliturgical activities, liturgical objects; liturgical drama; biblical exegesis; imagery; processions, liturgical. 2 February, 121 institution, 120 popular traditions, 122, 123 Roman origins, 123 Christmas, 25, 33, 37, 66, 68, 83, 87, 93–5, 98–108, 110, 114, 121, 169 imagery. See imagery replicated at Epiphany, 107 three Masses on Christmas Day, 97, 101 in aurora, 100, 102 Main Mass, 107 Mass in gallicantu, 99, 102 Christmas season, 34, 93–129

Ordo ad representandum Herodem (Fleury), 109–10

Ordo Stellae, 42, 108, 115 Passion Plays, 153

Processus prophetarum, 49, 94 Purification (Padua, 14th century), 124

Quem quaeritis, 109, 142, 156, 158,

161–3, 201 Shrewsbury Fragments, 162 staging, 42, 91, 108, 110, 166 pyrotechnics, 108 Visitatio Sepulchri, 156, 158 liturgy, 5, 33–4, 77, 87, 122, 147–8, 175, See also INDEX OF REFERENCES TO LITURGICAL MATERIAL, 217–27. Creed, 38–9, 88, 158 in Latin, 5, 20, 31–2, 50, 138, 144–5, 153, 158 in texts of York pageants, 18, 22, 43, 61, 125–6, 160, 166–8, 171–2, 175 liturgical time, 31, 33–4, 72, 94 Mass, 7, 14, 20, 28, 34, 37, 52, 83, 89, 97, 102, 123, 129, 130–1, 144, 159, 162, 167, 173, See also sacraments, Eucharist. Gospel reading, 31 mode, 21, 88–9, 92, 161, 169, 175 Paternoster, 39, 88 liturgy, Bible readings and quotations, 37, See also INDEX OF REFERENCES TO LITURGICAL MATERIAL mode, 56 narrative ordering, 31, 55–7, 64, 163 in Breviary, 56–7, 59 influences York Cycle, 33, 36, 45, 48, 50, 53, 56, 66, 68, 72–5, 94 thematic, 34 typological, 63 Septuagesima to Quadragesima and York Old Testament pageants, 48–9, 56 source of Play of Adam, 49

236

INDEX Circumcision, 93 Corpus Christi, 3, 5, 7–10, 13, 16, 27, 31, 34, 38, 41, 44, 49, 51, 83, 101, 103, 106, 109, 114, 121, 128, 130–1, 140, 161, 166, 168-9, 175, 180, 191, 201–2 institution and date, 7 procession. See processions, liturgical Easter, 35, 37, 42, 68, 72, 83, 91, 94, 130, 142, 155–62, 168, 179 Elevatio ceremony, 89, 156–9 Easter Eve, 157 Easter season, 34 Easter Sunday, 142 Easter Vigil, 162 Easter Week, 163, 164 Ember Days, 73 Epiphany, 25, 35, 37, 42, 44, 46, 91, 93–4, 106–111, 114, 117–18, 128, 178, See also liturgy, ceremonies, paraliturgical activities; processions, liturgical. etymology. See biblical exegesis, etymologies, imagery See imagery. replicates Christmas Day, 107 Epiphany, Vigil, 114, 118 replicates Christmas Day, 114 festivals celebrating theophany Candlemas, 106 Epiphany, 106–7 Epiphany, Sunday within Octave, Baptism of Christ (Gospel), 106 Quadragesima 4, Feeding of the Five Thousand (Gospel), 107 Sunday 2 after Octave of Epiphany, Marriage at Cana (Gospel), 107 fixed and moveable feasts, 7, 37, 44–5, 94 and structure of York Cycle, 44 Good Friday, 80, 88–9, 130, 142, 144–7, 150–6, 173, 179 Depositio ceremony, 89, 155–7 Improperia, 87, 89, 144, 149 Mass of the Pre-Sanctified, 149 planctus, 38, 80, 118–19, 143, 152– 4 Good Friday to Easter Sunday, 142 Holy Innocents, 93, 111, 118, 131 Octave, 119 Holy Saturday, 157 Holy Week, 35, 79, 83, 87, 90, 130, 132, 161, 169

Baptism, 43 Lent, 37, 40, 41, 42, 45, 48, 56, 62, 64, 66, 68–84, 94, 130, 134, 141 catechumens, 40, 41 and penitents, 83 Ember Saturday, 73 Great Vigil of Twelve Lessons, 73 sacrament of Ordination, 73 fast, 68, 70, 72, 73 Lenten sermons, 71, 72 Sunday 4, Day of Great Scrutiny, 41 Low Sunday, 163 Maundy Thursday, 173 Octave of Epiphany, 117 Palm Sunday, 26, 35, 68, 78, 85, 88, 90–1, 94, 121, 130, 131–42, 158, See also liturgy, ceremonies; liturgy, paraliturgical activities; processions, liturgical. choirboys, 132, 138, 140 Host as Christ, 140 music, 131–4, 136, 138, 140–1 popular superstitions, 136 Pentecost, 73, 130, 161, 166–8 period from after Epiphany to Quadragesima, 68 after Epiphany to Septuagesima, 37–47, 84 between Epiphany and Holy Week, 34, 40 between Trinity and Advent, 44 Christmas to Easter, 33, 84 Epiphany to Easter, 37 Holy Week to Pentecost, 130-68 Quadragesima to Palm Sunday, 68–84 Septuagesima to Quadragesima, 45, 48–67 Quadragesima, 48, 67–8, 72, 85–6 Quadragesima Sunday, 48, 66 Quinquagesima, 48 Quinquagesima Sunday, 48, 62, 67 Septuagesima, 48–9, 55–6, 59, 67 Septuagesima period (70 days), 35, 37 Septuagesima Sunday, 37, 44, 46, 48–55, 58, 60, 66–7 Sexagesima, 48, 61–2 Sexagesima Sunday, 58, 67 Transfiguration, Feast instituted 1480s/1490s, 74 Trinity Sunday, 7, 161 Vigil of the Nativity (Christmas Eve), 98, 102

237

INDEX liturgy, liturgical books. See also York, liturgical books. and York Cycle, 35 Books of Hours, 19, 32, 35, 39 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 56 (Sarum Use), 179 Hours of Étienne Chevalier, 113 Breviary Use of York, 35, 42–3, 48–9, 51–64, 66, 93–4, 104–5, 111, 117, 141–2, 144–5, 150, 155, 157, 165–7 Manual and Processional Use of York, 42–3, 97–9, 101, 107, 127, 131, 134, 136, 141, 144–7, 150, 152, 159, 160, 166, 172–3, 176–7 Missal, 66, 68, 117, 138 Dominican Use (1256), 18 Franciscan Use (1243), 18 Use of Rome, 18 Use of Sarum, 44, 136 Palm Sunday procession, 135 Use of York, 37, 43, 46, 48, 67, 75–6, 97–102, 108, 116, 131, 136, 138–9, 162, 165, 167, 173 MS D (York Minster), 140 Primer, 32 liturgy, liturgical objects candles, 42, 121–4, 126, 128, 159–60, 166 Paschal Candle, 121, 157 processional torches, 14, 133 torches to light altars at Elevation, 14–15, 24 canopy, 133 censer, 19, 159–60, 166 chrismatory, 179–80 Cross, 135–7, 139–40, 145–6, 150 buried and raised in Easter ceremonies, 89, 155–6, 159–60 relic of True Cross, 146 represents Christ, 89, 160 Easter Sepulchre, 89, 91, 155–7, 159–60 font, 19, 121, 157, 170, 178 Gospel book, 135 monstrance, 10, 133, 135–6, 140 pyx, 159–60 wafers, 97, 136, 173, 175 liturgy, order of service. See also liturgy, rubrics Baptism (Manual), 42–3, 172–3 Baptism (Missal), 43 Marriage (Manual), 176

liturgy, ceremonies Adoration of the Cross (Good Friday), 146–7, 149, 152–3, 155 Ascension Day, effigy of Christ, 165 Burial of the Dead, 155 Candlemas, 120–4, 128 blessing the candles, 121–2, 124 dramatic Purification ceremony, 124 offering the candles, 121, 123–4 Churching of Women, 120, 124 consecration of a church, 136, 158 Consecration of the Host. See sacraments, Eucharist, Host creeping to the Cross (Good Friday), 88, 146, 150–1, 156 Depositio of the Cross (Good Friday), 89, 155–7 Host buried with Cross, 155–6 Elevatio of the Cross (Easter), 89, 155–61 Host raised with Cross, 159 Elevation of the Host, 14–15, 18–19, 20, 24, 28, 88, 97, 103, 126, 156, 175 Epiphany Magi’s procession, 109 oblatio populi, 109 offertory and gift-giving, 109, 115 Officium Stellae, Rouen, 109 Holy Week, 161 Maundy Thursday representation of Last Supper, 173 washing of feet, 173 Palm Sunday, 121, 137, 142, See also liturgy, paraliturgical activities; processions. Lenten veil raised, 134, 136–7, 139–40, 149 priest strikes church door with cross, 136–7 Stations of the Cross, 142–3, 156 liturgy, hymns, canticles, and prayers. See separate INDEX OF REFERENCES TO LITURGICAL MATERIAL Missal, Tropes, 162–3 Tropes, 87, 89, 109, See also liturgical drama planctus Mariae, 153–4 in York Cycle, 38, 80, 118–19, 143, 152, 154 vernacular versions, 154 Stabat Mater, ’Stond wel moder’, 154 liturgy, lay participation, 19, 88, See also liturgy, paraliturgical activities.

238

INDEX Marriage (modern), 177 liturgy, paraliturgical activities, 18–28, 34, 124, 129–30, 153 ‘white witchcraft’, 121 Ash Wednesday ashes, 121 Candlemas candles, 121–5, 128 Christmas crib, 97, 108 Christmas misrule, 110 creeping to the Cross (Good Friday), 88, 146, 150–1, 156 Easter, 142 Elevation prayers, 20–8, 88, 103, 126, 128, 140–1, 154 Epiphany, 25, See also processions, liturgical. Good Friday, 142 Palm Sunday, 136 eyewitness account, 136 making crosses of sticks, 136 palms, 88, 91, 121, 131–2 English substitutes, 131 Stations of the Cross, 142–3, 156 liturgy, readings (non-biblical). See separate INDEX OF REFERENCES TO LITURGICAL MATERIAL liturgy, rubrics. See also liturgy, order of service. Breviary, Epiphany, 42 Manual, Sacrament of Marriage, 177 Missal, Maundy Thursday representation of Last Supper, 173 Washing of Feet, 173 Processional, Use of Sarum Easter Day, 160 Epiphany, 107 Palm Sunday, 135–6 Processional, Use of York Easter Day, 159–60 Good Friday, 145–6 Palm Sunday, 131, 133–6, 139–40 liturgy, sacraments. See sacraments Lives of Christ and Gospel Harmonies, 36, 71–3, 75, 81, 96–7, 105, 158, 163 Lollardy. See Wyclif Lord’s Prayer. See Paternoster Love, Nicholas, 16–17

Marmoutier, 184 Mary of Egypt, Saint, identified with Mary Magdalen, 75 Mass. See liturgy Mass of Pope Gregory. See iconography, of the Mass; Host, miracles Mercers. See York, guilds, trade and craft; also Mercers’ 1433 indenture; York Cycle pageants, Last Judgement. Meredith, Peter, 76 Milan, Epiphany procession, 113 Mirk, John Festial, 19, 71, 123, 126, 157 Instructions for Parish Priests, 19 Mirour of Mans Saluacioune. See

Speculum Humanae Salvationis

moral interlude. See morality plays morality plays, 1, 69 Mount Grace Priory (Yorks), 17, 185–6 Mowbray, Thomas (1384–1405), 4th Earl of Norfolk, Earl Marshal, 189 mystery cycles. See mystery plays; also York Cycle; Chester Cycle; Coventry Cycle; N. Town Plays; Towneley Plays mystery plays, 1, 8, 40, 69, 70, 89, 112, 176, 191 N. Town Plays, 1, 9 Mary Play, 9 pageants Last Supper, 174 Moses, 66 Nativity, 95 Purification, 124 Raising of Lazarus, 79

Woman Taken in Adultery

Lenten exemplum on repentance, 76

Passion Play, 9 Nazareth, 128 Neville, Ralph (c.1364–1425), 1st Earl of Westmorland, 200 Nicholas de Lyra Postilla super Biblia, 75, 80 Norwich Cathedral, roof bosses, 171, 174 Ordo paginarum. See York: civic documents Ordo representacionis Ade (Play of Adam), 49 Oxford University, 15, 26, 188, 212 Merton College, 112 Padua Epiphany procession, 113 Purification drama, 124

Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, 16–18, 72, 97, 105, 112–13,

127–9, 163 on the Eucharist, 16–17 Low Countries, 12, 65, 188 Ludolphus de Saxonia Vita Jesu Christi, 80–2 Mâle, Émile, 112–13

239

INDEX Prudentius, Aurelius Clemens (348–after 405), Psychomachia, 69 Pseudo-Bonaventura Meditaciones Vitae Christi, 16, 96 psychomachia, 69, See also Prudentius. Radegund, Saint (518–587), Queen of Lothair I, 146 Raine, James, York historian, 189–90, 200 Records of Early English Drama, 1, 3–4, 108 Reformation, 1, 8, 31, 120–1 Regularis Concordia (Winchester, 973), 156, 162 religious confraternities. See confraternities, religious, also Corpus Christi Guild Richard II, king of England (1377–1399), 113, 188, 196 Ripon (Yorks), misericords, 65 Rouen, 109 Royal Entries, 21, 138, 140–1 Henry VII into York (1487), 21, 202–3 Sacrament of the Altar. See sacraments, Eucharist sacraments, 77, 130, 169, 180 Baptism, 41–3, 84, 87, 169, 171–3, 175–7 Confirmation, 40–1, 178 Eucharist, 13–19, 23, 26, 29, 31, 44, 51, 62, 69, 84, 87, 89, 97, 102–3, 128, 130, 142, 154, 165, 169, 173, 175–6, 179–80, 193 Easter communion, 42, 68, 73 Host, 7, 15, 18–19, 29, 83, 102–3, 126, 135–6, 155–6, 175, 178 Body of Christ, 89, 161 carried in procession, 10, 12, 19–20, 92, 109, 133, 135–40, 159, 191 Consecration, 14, 19, 23–4, 27–8, 89, 102, 125, 128, 153–4, 161, 173–5 Easter Elevatio ceremony, 89, 159–60 Elevation, 14–15, 18–21, 24, 28, 88, 97, 103, 126, 153, 175 miracles, 19, 23, 27, 28 Real Presence, 20, 98, 160 represents Christ, 133, 135, 140, 160 reservation, 144, 173 institution, 130, 169, 173–5, 177, 193, 202 Marriage at Cana, 177

Passion Plays, 9, 130 Passover, 132, 141, 173, See also law, Old and New Laws; theology, Old and New Laws. Paternoster. See liturgy; INDEX OF REFERENCES TO LITURGICAL MATERIAL; lay instruction, catechesis Pearl, 52 Pecham, John (d. 1292), archbishop of Canterbury (1279), 38–9 Ignorancia sacerdotum (1281), 39 Percy, Henry (1341–1408), 1st Earl of Northumberland, 189 processions, 90–2, See also lay celebrations; liturgy, ceremonies; Corpus Christi, procession; Royal Entries. levels of engagement, 91 liturgical, 87, 90–2, 141 Ascension Day, 165 Candlemas, 118, 121, 123–4, 126, 128 Christmas Day, 99, 107 Corpus, 131 Corpus Christi, 7, 10–14, 18, 20, 90, 92, 109, 140, 188, 191 Valencia, 10, 92, 140, 192 Easter, 159 Easter Day, 159, 160 encounter customs, 91, 128, 133, 137 Epiphany, 25, 106–7, 109-10, 117 European, 191 Good Friday, 145–7, 152 Holy Blood at Bruges, 192 Holy Week, Seville, 131 Palm Sunday, 90–1, 131–42 parochial procession, 91, 133, 135–6 Seville, 131 Spain, 135 Pentecost, 166 secular, 8, 90–2, 106, 131, 141, 191 Corpus Christi, 10–12, 90, 191 Valencia, 10, 92, 140, 192 Epiphany, Florence, Milan, Padua, 113 Holy Blood at Bruges, 192 Holy Week, Seville, 131 Palm Sunday Seville, 131 Spain, 135 theorised, 91 Prophets’ Plays, 40, See also processus prophetarum.

240

INDEX Extreme Unction, 178–9 Marriage, 176–7 Ordination, 73 no examples, 176 Penance, 39, 84, 175 Confession, 39, 42, 48, 176 Seven Sacraments, 19, 38–9, 88, 169 Salle (Norfolk), Seven Sacraments font, 19 Sargent, Michael, 16–17 Scrope, Richard (1350–1405), archbishop of York (1398–1405), 189 cult, 190, 194, 200–1 rebellion, 189–91, 200–1 trial, 190–1, 195, 199, 200–1 Sedulius, Caelius (5th century) A solis ortus cardine, 104 Sellers, Maud, 184 Seven Deadly Sins, Virtues, Works of Mercy. See lay instruction, catechesis; iconography Seville, Semana Santa processions, 131 Somerton (Oxfordshire), St James, reredos, 174 Spain, ritual and celebration, 10, 92, 106, 131, 135, 140, 192, 193 Speculum humanae salvationis, 153 translated as Mirour of Mans Saluacioune, 153 Speculum Sacerdotale, 123, 214 staging, 7, See also York Cycle, staging; liturgical drama, staging. scenography, 91 spatial semantics, 91 Stanzaic Life of Christ, 72 Stevens, Martin, 140–1 Suso, Henry Horologium Sapientiae, 16–18 English translation, 17 Synod of Paris (1198–1203), 18 Tattershall (Lincs), Collegiate Church Seven Sacraments glass, 65, 170–1 Ten Commandments. See law; lay instruction, catechesis Theodora I (c.500–547), wife of Emperor Justinian I, 123 Theodulfus of Orléans (c.760–c.821), Gloria, laus, et honor, 133, 136 theology, 1, 5 Advents of Christ, 9 Nativity, 98 Second Coming, 20, 26, 28, 42, 48, 98 atonement, 57 Christ as food, 26, 97–8, 102–3, 104

as Judge, 27–8, 78–9, 98, 167, 182 as New Adam, 104 as sacrificial infant, 20, 26–7 recognised by prophecy and actions, 141 Church as mystical body of Christ, 83 covenant, 55–6, 58–9, 61–3, 74, 78, 84, 130, 195 defeat of Death and the Devil, 43, 78, 165 Devil and devils, 25–6, 43, 46, 53, 59, 61, 71, 73, 86, 121, 165 'Devil's rights', 158 divine and human law, 182 divinity of Christ, 73, 78–9, 81, 102, 106, 108, 118, 127, 130, 132, 178 doctrine of divine duplicity, 70 dual nature of Christ, 38, 68–9, 71, 73–4, 79–81, 106 epiphany. See also theophany. etymology, 107, See biblical exegesis Nativity as epiphany, 106 Eucharist, 128 Fall of Man, 1, 33, 52, 66, 69, 107, 165 forgiveness of sin, 20–1, 29, 56, 75–7, 86, 97, 149, 155, 175 General Resurrection, 28, 66, 72–4, 79, 165 Gifts of the Holy Spirit, 39 grace, 22–3, 31, 52, 60–2, 102, 105, 202–3 human society as (Christ's) body, 37 hypapante, 127–8, 203 Incarnation, 23, 25–6, 28, 66, 97–102, 104–5 judgement by water and fire, 43, 61–2, 75 justice and mercy, 64, 74–7 Last Judgement (Doomsday), 26, 35, 43, 62, 68, 77, 85, 165 Life of Christ parallels life of Mary, 35 Limbo of the Fathers, 73–4, 157–8 Nativity, 97–8, 104–5 nature of God, 51 Old, 41 Old and New Laws, 39–40, 44, 64, 74–7, 132, 173, 182, 195 Original Sin, 57 paradoxes dual nature of Christ, 21, 26 Incarnation, 23, 107–8 justice and mercy, 74 last shall be first, 53, 55–6, 67 Mary, mother of her Father, 97, 99 Nativity, 99

241

INDEX

vitae Christi. See Lives of Christ Voragine, Jacobus de, Legenda Aurea, 95–6, 107, 116, 123, 125–7 wagons. See York Cycle, pageant wagons Wakefield. See Towneley Plays Walafrid Strabo, Glossa ordinaria, 79 Westminster Chronicle, 113 Westmorland, 187 Wey, William, 143 William of York, Saint, 46, 200 Wilton Diptych, 113 Woolf, Rosemary, The English Mystery Plays, 96, 162, 164, 174 worship, 5, 16, See also liturgy, lay devotion. revival of sacramentalism, 13, 16–18, 31, 37, 154, 169, 178 Wyclif, John (?1324–1384), and Lollardy, 15–17, 37, 202 York, 181 archbishops Arundel, Thomas (1388), 15–17, 97, 191, 200, 202 Scrope, Richard (1398), 189, 190, 199–200 cult, 190, 200–1 rebellion, 189–91, 194, 200–1 trial, 190–1, 195, 199–201 Thoresby, John (1352), 33, 39, 40, 172, 185 archdiocese, 16, 188 Archbishop's Palace at Bishopthorpe, 189 civic documents A/Y Memorandum Book, 2, 3, 7, 35, 186–8 A/Y Memorandum Book, Ordo paginarum, 2–4, 20, 31, 35–6, 50, 54, 65, 75, 79, 95, 103, 120, 139, 143, 151, 161, 178, 185, 191–3, 199 York Register, BL Add. MS 35290, 2–4, 7, 9, 18, 20, 24, 28, 31, 35–7, 40, 43, 49, 50, 57, 60–1, 65, 69, 73, 75–6, 79, 92–3, 95–6, 103, 110, 113, 117, 120, 130, 137, 139, 141, 143, 151, 153, 166, 177–8, 181–2, 192–3, 199 civic officials, 2, 13, 21, 182, 187 aldermanic group, 12–13, 187 wills, 184–5 Common Clerk, 2, 3, 11 Deputy Common Clerk, 24 Mayors, 11–15, 185–8, 191 bequests, 184–6

Purification and Presentation, 127 Virgin Birth, 97, 99 Real Presence of Christ, 7, 19–21, 23, 87, 92, 98, 128 Redemption, 1, 5, 9, 33, 52, 66, 69, 102, 142, 165, 172, 179 as legal contract, 74 sacramental, 8, 15, 18, 23, 27–8, 31, 37, 51, 73, 82, 84, 92, 103–4, 141, 154, 157, 179 theophany, 34, 77 Baptism of Christ, 42, 106–7, 178 Epiphany, 106, 112, 178 Feeding of the Five Thousand, 107 Marriage at Cana, 44, 107, 178 Presentation in the Temple, 106 time and eternity, 50–1, 53 transubstantiation, 7, 15, 21–3, 26, 28, 31, 34, 51, 66, 87, 89, 101, 103, 129, 153, 156, 175, 179 Trinity, 11, 22, 42, 49, 74, 79, 82, 107 First Person (God the Father), 50, 74, 107 Second Person (God the Son), 50, 74, 81, 106–7 Third Person (Holy Spirit), 39, 42, 61, 107, 128, 161, 166–8, 171, 195 Virgin Birth, 65, 105 Thoresby, John (d. 1373), archbishop of York (1352), Lay Folks’ Catechism, 33, 39–40, 158, 172, 185 Thornton, John, of Coventry, glazier, 49 Towneley Plays, 1, 2 pageants Christ and the Doctors, 192 Killing of Abel, 58 Noah, 60 Prima Pastorum, 25 Raising of Lazarus, 79, 81 Twelfth Night. See liturgy, calendar, Epiphany; lay celebrations Twycross, Meg, 12, 43, 91, 101, 126, 139, 143, 151, 158, 160, 176, 189, 193 Valencia, Spain, 10, 92, 140, 192 Van der Weyden, Roger (1400–1464) Antwerp, ‘Seven Sacraments’ altarpiece, 19, 153, 175 Venantius Fortunatus (c.535–c.600) Pange lingua, 146–7, 152 Vérard, Antoine, L’art de bien vivre et bien mourir, 170 Vincent, Saint, 123 Visio Lazari, 79

242

INDEX clergy, 182, 184, 192, 202 Corpus Christi procession. See Corpus Christi Creed Play, 39 guild chapels, 184 St Anne, Foss Bridge, 184 guilds, trade and craft, 11–12, 18, 92 Butchers, 187 in Corpus Christi procession, 11 Mercers, 3, 11, 13 York Mercers’ 1433 indenture, 3, 12–14 officials Constables, 12 Master, 12 pageant masters, 3, 12 responsible for pageants, 2–3, 11, 18, 60, See also York Cycle, pageants under titles. Skinners’ pageant house, 139 hospitals, 184 maisons dieu, 184–7 St Leonard’s Hospital, 184–7, 191, 193 Purification pageant, 120 St Nicholas (leper house), 184, 186 liturgical manuscripts Books of Hours ‘Bolton Hours’, 14, 39, 200 York Minster Library MS XVI. K. 6, 147 mendicant orders, 11, 184–8 Austin Friars, 184 Erghholme, John, 188 library, 188 Waldeby, John, 188 Carmelites, 184 Bate, John, 188 Dominicans, 184 Franciscans, 18, 142, 153, 184, 187–8 Melton, William de, 188 parish churches, 184–5, 193 All Saints, Pavement, 147 St John the Baptist, Hungate, 15, 186 St John the Evangelist, Micklegate, stained glass, 171 St Sampson, 15 Seven Sacraments glass, 170 St Saviour, 15 Paternoster Play, 39 Play of St James the Apostle, 39 religious houses, 185, 194 Carmelite Priory at Hungate, 184

Clementhorpe nunnery (Benedictines), 184–6 Dominican friary at les Toftes, 184 Franciscan friary, 187 Holy Trinity Priory, 184, 191 nunneries, 186 St Mary’s Abbey, 17, 39, 184–6, 191, 202 religious orders, 184 Benedictine nuns, 184 Benedictines, 184, 186 Gilbertine canons, 184 Scrope rebellion, 189–1, See York, archbishops; Scrope, Richard topography Bootham, 186 Marygate, 186 Shambles, 187 Tylmyre, 187 trade with Low Countries, 65 York Minster, 140, 184–5, 188, 190–1, 200, 202 clergy, 188–90 Epiphany ceremonies, 114 Great East Window (1405–1408), 49 liturgical drama, 108 York citizens, 181, 184, 202 aliens, 12–13 Alstanmore, John (Mayor 1427), 14 Alstanmore, Thomas, 14 and the Crown, 194, 202 Bedale, Alice, second wife of William, 13 Bedale, William (Mayor 1437), 13 Blackburn, Nicholas Senior (Mayor 1412), 14, 39, 185, 188 Bolton, John II (Mayor 1432), 14, 39 Bracebridge, Thomas (Mayor 1424), 15, 186 Clerke, John, Deputy Common Clerk, 24, 43, 57, 75, 160 Curtays, Thomas, 13 Esyngwold, Thomas (Mayor 1423), 15 Freemen, 18, 188 Frost, William (Mayor 1396–1397, 1400–1404, 1405–1406), 187 Graa, Thomas, 187 Gysburne, John de (Mayor 1380), 185 Holbek, Agnes, wife of William, 13 Holbek, William (Mayor 1449, 1458, 1470, 1471, 1472), 13 Hudson, ‘Sir’ Henry, priest, rector of All Saints, North Street, 5 Kirkham, Thomas (Mayor 1435), 14

243

INDEX 12-year-old Christ as catechumen, 192 Angel at Purification, 125 Angel sent to Cain and Abel, 58 Angels at Baptism, 172 Archdeclyne (Architriclinius), 177 ass, Abraham’s, 64 Entry into Jerusalem, 64, 132–3, 137–9, 141 Brewbarret, 58 Burgesses, 27, 137–8, 140–1 Deus, 50–1, 54, 57, 83 God the Father, 50 God the Son (as Creator), 50 Devil, 69 Doctor as prologue, 94, 104, 192 Herod as tyrant, 93, 111 Janitor, 137, 139 Jewish Doctors at Pentecost, 168 Midwife at Purification, 120 Pilate's soldiers, 27 Prisbeter (Purification), 125 singing children of Jerusalem, 138 Soldiers at the Crucifixion, 143, 149 Soldiers at the Resurrection, 164 Soldiers on Via Crucis, 143, 148 Sons of Simeon, 120, 193 early stages, 4, 7, 92, 157, 191 music, 33, 124, 138–9, 160, 166 narrative selection, 3, 7–9, 20, 28, 31, 33, 48, 60, 66, 83, 94, 132, 173, 192 and liturgy, 33, 45, 48, 50, 53, 56–7, 64, 66, 73–4, 94, See also biblical narrative, in liturgy; calendar. chronological vs liturgical order, 36–7, 66, 68, 75, 93–4, 118, 164 Christmas sequence, 27, 34, 94 Easter sequence, 34 Ministry pageants, 48, 73 Old Testament pageants, 34, 48–9, 56, 94 pageant wagons, 7, 11–12, 137, 191 Creation, 51 Crucifixion, 144, 148 Entry into Jerusalem, 138–9 ‘Jerusalem’, 137, 139 in tandem, 25, 93, 95, 110, 116 Last Judgement, 12 Resurrection, 160 pageants, 12

Louth, Joan, mother of Richard, 13 Louth, Richard, 13 Louth, Robert, son of Richard, 13 Market, Henry, 13 Market, Matilda, 13 merchants, 12–14, 39, 189, 193, 199–201 Northeby, John de (Mayor 1416), 185 Ormshede, William (Mayor 1433), 14 Quixley, Simon de, 187 Revetour, William, chaplain St William's Ouse Bridge, 39 Russell, Richard (Mayor 1421, 1430), 14, 186 Sauvage, Robert, 187–8 Sauvage, Thomas, friar, son of Robert, 188 Usflete, Nicholas (Mayor 1438), 13 York Cycle, passim actors, 137, 151, 163, 182–3 masked, 12, 50, 160 playing Christ, 7, 20, 155, 160, 175, 193 and contemporary law and politics, 182–3, 191–6, 200–1, See also law. and Corpus Christi, 7, 9, 10–29, 31, 169, 188 and iconography, 5 and liturgy, 5, 21, 28, 33–7, 43, 45, 46, 54, 57, 60, 84, 87–9, 169, 181 Elevation prayers, 21–8 greetings to the Virgin, 27 Latin quotations from liturgy, 18, 61, 160, 166–8 audience, 5, 17, 20, 23–4, 28, 41, 48, 51, 57, 69–70, 79, 88–9, 105, 139, 140, 144, 146, 148–9, 151–2, 160–1, 165, 175–6, 178, 182, 192, 194, 196, 201–2 as witnesses, 70–1, 201 direct address, 69–71, 77, 144, 149, 151, 169, 173, 176, 180 experience of liturgy, 83, 88, 137, 163 instruction, 70, 169, 171, 173, 175, 177–8 authorising milieu, 5, 18, 72, 104, 124 authors and devisers, 4–5, 9, 17, 28, 38, 69, 72, 75, 82, 94, 105, 119–20, 129–30, 137–8, 142, 161–2, 175 ‘York Realist’, 69, 194 clerics, 18, 35, 48, 96, 105, 181, 183, 193 characters, 2, See also biblical characters; biblical apocrypha, characters.

Abraham and Isaac

(Parchmentmakers and Bookbinders), 35, 63–4

244

INDEX

Adam and Eve in Eden (Fullers),

Fall of Man (Coopers), 35, 49,

Annunciation and Visitation

Flight into Egypt (Marshals), 9,

35, 49, 56

56–7, 181

(Spicers), 8, 9, 22, 35, 93–4, 96, 104, 192 prologue by Doctor, 94 Ascension (Tailors), 8, 130, 161, 165–6

38, 93, 117–19, 152

Harrowing of Hell (Saddlers), 98, 157–8, 182

Herod and the Magi (Masons and Goldsmiths), 9, 25, 64, 87, 93, 110–11, 116–19 Hortulanus (Winedrawers), 130, 161, 164, 179

Assumption of the Virgin (Weavers), 8–9, 27

Baptism (Barbers), 35–7, 41–4, 87,

Incredulity of Thomas

169, 171–3, 177

Building of the Ark

(Scriveners), 130, 161, 164

Jesus in the House of Simon the Leper (Ironmongers), 35,

(Shipwrights), 35, 60 Cain and Abel (Glovers), 35, 56–8 Christ and the Doctors (Spurriers and Lorimers), 35, 36, 37–41, 77, 178, 192

74–5, 178–9

Joseph’s Trouble (Pewterers and Founders), 9, 23, 93

Christ before Annas and Caiaphas (Bowyers and

Last Judgement (Mercers), 3, 8,

12, 27, 28, 35, 53, 62, 68, 77, 83, 129, 161, 182, 185 Last Supper (Bakers), 87, 130, 169, 173–5, 177, 193 Marriage at Cana (Vintners), 35–7, 44, 177 Moses and Pharaoh (Hosiers), 35, 64 Nativity (Tilethatchers), 8–9, 23–5, 93–9, 101–6, 129 Noah’s Flood (Fishers and Mariners), 35, 43, 60–2 Passion sequence, 8, 27, 130, 142, 155, 182 Pentecost (Potters), 8, 130, 161, 166–8 Latin text, 166–8 Purification (Hatmakers, Masons, and Labourers), 9, 26–7, 87, 93, 119–20, 124–8, 193 Raising of Lazarus. See Woman

Fletchers), 130, 194–7, 199 Christ before Herod (Litsters), 130, 194–5 Christ before Pilate 1. See Dream

of Pilate's Wife Christ before Pilate 2

(Tilemakers), 27, 130, 194–9

Christ’s Appearance to Mary Magdalen. See Hortulanus Conspiracy (Cutlers), 201 Coronation of the Virgin (Mayor, later Hostelers), 8–9, 27

Creation (Plasterers). See Work of the Five Days Creation and Fall of the Angels

(Barkers), 8, 35, 49, 50–4, 58, 69

Creation of Adam and Eve

(Cardmakers), 35, 49, 54–7, 176 Crucifixion (Pinners and Latoners), 87, 130, 143–4, 147–51 Death of Christ (Butchers), 130, 151–5, 157, 179 Death of the Virgin (Drapers), 8–9, 27 Doomsday. See Last Judgement Dream of Pilate’s Wife (Tapiters and Couchers), 69, 130, 182, 194–9 Emmaus (Woolpackers and Woolbrokers), 130, 161, 164 Entry into Jerusalem (Skinners), 27, 62, 87, 90, 130–1, 137–42 Expulsion (Armourers), 35, 49, 56–7, 177

Taken in Adultery Resurrection (Carpenters), 8, 71, 130, 158–63, 201–2

Road to Calvary (Shearmen), 130, 143, 148–9, 152

Shepherds (Chandlers), 9, 24, 93–95, 162

Slaughter of the Innocents

(Girdlers and Nailers), 9, 38, 93, 118–19, 152 Temptation (Smiths), 35, 36, 66, 68–72, 182, 194 Transfiguration (Curriers), 35, 66, 73–4

Woman Taken in Adultery/Raising of Lazarus

245

INDEX

Last Supper, 174

(Cappers), 35, 66, 75–83, 175–6

modern reconstructions, 69, 137, 144, 160 music, 138–9, 160, 166 Nativity birth of Christ, 23, 96, 103 integrated with Shepherds, 95 Pentecost, Descent of the Holy Ghost, 166 processional staging, 3, 7, 11, 90–2, 141, 191 processions, 90, 110, 117–18, 137–8, 140–1, 158 props, 12, 108, 116, 143–4, 148, 149, 151–2, 155, 161 pyrotechnics, 108, 116 Raising of Lazarus, 82 stage directions, 2, 137–8, 160, 174 stage-hands, 11 Temptation, 71 Yorkshire, 187 monasteries, 186 Young, Karl Drama of the Medieval Church, 89, 109, 153, 156, 158, 166

Work of the Five Days

(Plasterers), 35, 49, 51, 54 performance, 3, 4, 12, 88, 181–3, 192–3

planctus Mariae

as model of lamentation, 38, 80, 118–19, 143, 152–4 records. See York, civic documents, A/Y Memorandum Book Ordo paginarum, York Register sacramental focus, 8, 31, 34, 41, 43, 87, 97–8, 103, 184 script. See York, civic documents, York Register staging, 2, 8, 11, 110, 165, 182 actors, 7, 11, 95, 148, 161 costumes, 12, 50, 182, 192 Last Judgement, 12 Resurrection, 160 Creation, 50 Creation and Fall of the Angels, 51 Entry into Jerusalem, 137–41 Last Judgement, Christ’s descent to earth, 28

246

Also available

The Dramatic Liturgy of Anglo-Saxon England M. BRADFORD BEDINGFIELD An intelligent and interesting examination.... A welcome contribution. ALBION This volume presents an examination of the liturgical rituals of the high festivals from Christmas to Ascension in late Anglo-Saxon England, particularly in the secular church. It expands the current knowledge of liturgical practice in a period where there is little direct evidence, using vernacular homilies and sermons – important but neglected sources of information – to explore the extent to which monastic practices were extended to the secular church. The performative nature of liturgy and its spiritual, emotional and educative value receive particular attention; the author argues that preachers were often unconsciously influenced by the liturgical experience of an episode rather than by the biblical narrative which they were ostensibly retelling.

Gender and Medieval Drama KATIE NORMINGTON K Present[s] an extremely complex and controversial subject in a very readable fashion... Highly recommended. CHOICE The focus of this study is upon the Corpus Christi plays, supplemented by other performance practices such as festive and social entertainments, civic parades, funeral processions and public punishments. The main argument relates to the traditional approaches to women’s non-performance in the Corpus Christi dramas, but other factors are considered and analysed, including the semiotics of the cross-dressed actor and the significance of the visual and spatial language of the processional stage to gender debates. In conclusion, there is a series of readings which reassess the dramatic portrayal of a selection of holy and vulgar women – the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, Mrs Noah and Dame Procula. www.boydell.co.uk www.boydellandbrewer.com

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