Note 240 — Chapter XIX · LITURGICAL PLAYS (continued)

Grenier, 388 (Amiens, 1291, and elsewhere in Picardy); Hautcœur, Documents liturgiques de Lille, 65 (thirteenth century), and Histoire de l’Église de Lille, i. 427; Gasté, 75 (Bayeux, thirteenth century, Caen, Coutances); D’Ancona, i. 31 (Parma), i. 88 (Vicenza, 1379, a more elaborate out-of-door performance); Naogeorgos in Stubbes, i. 337 (Germany); Ducange, s.v. nebulae. I have three English examples: Hone, E. D. Book, i. 685 (Computus of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, for 1509), ‘we have ivˢ viiᵈ paid to those playing with the great and little angel and the dragon; iiiˢ paid for little cords employed about the Holy Ghost; ivˢ viᵈ for making the angel censing (thurificantis), and iiˢ iiᵈ for cords of it—all on the feast of Pentecost’; Lincoln Statutes, i. 335; ii. cxviii. 165 (1330) ‘in distributione autem Pentecostali percipiet ... clericus ducens columbam vj denarios’; W. Lambarde, Alphabetical Description of the Chief Places in England and Wales (1730, written in sixteenth century), 459, s.v. Wytney, ‘The like Toye I myselfe (beinge then a Chyld) once saw in Poules Church at London, at a Feast of Whitsontyde, wheare the comynge downe of the Holy Gost was set forthe by a white Pigion, that was let to fly out of a Hole, that yet is to be sene in the mydst of the Roofe of the great Ile, and by a longe Censer, which descendinge out of the same Place almost to the verie Grounde, was swinged up and downe at suche a Lengthe, that it reached with thone Swepe almost to the West Gate of the Churche, and with the other to the Quyre Staires of the same, breathynge out over the whole Churche and Companie a most pleasant Perfume of suche swete Thinges as burned thearin; with the like doome Shewes also, they used every whear to furnishe sondrye Partes of their Churche Service, as by their Spectacles of the Nativitie, Passion, and Ascension of Christe.’ From further notices in W. S. Simpson, St. Paul’s and Old City Life, 62, 83, it appears that the censing was on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in Whit-week, that the Lord Mayor attended, and that the ceremony was replaced by sermons in 1548.