Note 1 — Chapter XVIII · LITURGICAL PLAYS

On these tendencies generally, see Davidson, 130; Ward, i. 32; R. Rosières, Société française au Moyen Âge, ii. 228; E. King, Dramatic Art and Church Liturgy (Dublin Review, cxxv. 43). Mediaeval liturgiologists such as Belethus, Durandus, and Honorius of Autun (P.L. clxxii), lay great stress on the symbolical aspect of ritual and ceremonial. J. M. Robertson, The Gospel Mystery-Play (The Reformer, N.S. iii (1901), 657), makes an ingenious attempt to show that the earlier gospel narratives of the Passion, those of Saints Matthew and Mark, are based upon a dramatic version. This, he thinks, to have been on classical lines, and to have been performed liturgically until about the second century, when it was dropped in deference to the ascetic views of the stage then prevalent (cf. vol. i. p. 11). But the narrative, with its short speeches, its crowd of characters and its sufferings ‘coram populo’ cannot, on the face of it, be derived from a classical drama. A nearer parallel would be the Graeco-Jewish Ἐξαγωγή of Ezechiel (first century B.C., cf. Ward, i. 3). The Gospel narrative is, no doubt, mainly ‘a presentation of dramatic action and dialogue’; but this may be because it was built up around Logia. Of external evidence for Mr. Robertson’s view there is none. The ritual of the first two centuries was probably a very simple one; cf. F. E. Warren, Liturgy of the Ante-Nicene Church, 54. The earliest liturgical dramas, even in the Greek churches, and those only guessed at, are of the fourth (cf. p. 206). Mr. Robertson claims support from Galatians, iii. 1 οἷς κατ’ ὀφθαλμοὺς Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς προεγράφη ἐσταυρωμένος. Lightfoot, however, declares that the meaning of προγράφειν is ‘write up in public,’ ‘placard,’ ‘proclaim.’ If it cannot, as he says, mean ‘paint,’ still less can it mean ‘represent dramatically.’