Note 154 — Chapter XVIII · LITURGICAL PLAYS

A planctus ascribed to Bonaventura (thirteenth century) has the titles ‘Officium de compassione Mariae’ (Wechssler, 14), and ‘Officium sanctae crucis’ (Bibl. de l’École des Chartes, xxxiv. 315). Another, the ‘Surgit Christus cum trophaeo,’ is headed in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century MSS. ‘Sequentia devota antiquorum nostrorum de resurrectionis argumentis. Sanctarum virginum Mariae ac Mariae Magdalene de compassione mortis Christi per modum dyalogi sequentia.’ The chorus begins, and ‘tres bene vociferati scholares respondent’ (text in Milchsack, 92; cf. Wechssler, 14). A third, ‘O fratres et sorores,’ is headed ‘Hic incipit planctus Mariae et aliorum in die Parasceves’ (text from fourteenth-century Cividale MS. in Coussemaker, 285; Julleville, i. 58; cf. Wechssler, 17). Ducange, s.v. Planctus, quotes a (thirteenth-century) Toulouse rubric, ‘planctum beatissimae Virginis Mariae, qui dicitur a duobus puerulis post Matutinum et debent esse monachi, si possunt reperiri ad hoc apti.’ This planctus was sung from the ‘cathedra praedicatorii.’ On the use of vernacular Italian planctus by the laudesi in churches through Lent, cf. Wechssler, 30. The vernacular German ‘ludus passionis’ printed by O. Schönemann, Der Sündenfall und Marienklage (1855), 129, from a Wolfenbüttel fifteenth-century MS., seems to have still been meant for liturgical use, as it has the rubric ‘debet cantari post crux fidelis et sic finiri usque ad vesperam lamentabiliter cum caeteris sicut consuetum est fieri.’ It incorporates the Depositio.