Note 167 — Chapter XIX · LITURGICAL PLAYS (continued)

Gasté, 33, citing Montpellier MS. H. 304. The play occurs, with an Officium Stellae, in an anonymous treatise De ratione divini officii. The Amiens Ordinarium of 1291 (Grenier, 389) gives directions for a Pastores during the procession after the communion at the midnight mass. In preparation lights were lit at the praesepe during first vespers ‘dum canitur versus praesepe iam fulget tuum.’ At the end of the first nocturn the figure of a child was placed there. At the first lesson of the second nocturn the cry of noël was raised.