Note 246 — Chapter XX · THE SECULARIZATION OF THE PLAYS

Text edited by V. Luzarche (Tours, 1854); L. Palustre (Paris, 1877); K. Bartsch, Chrestomathie, (ed. 1880, 91); K. Grass (Halle, 1891); cf. the elaborate study by Sepet, xxix, 105, 261, and Julleville, Les Myst. i. 81; ii. 217; Creizenach, i. 130; Clédat, 15. The manuscript is Tours MS. 927, formerly belonging to the Benedictines of Marmoutier. Grass, vi, summarizes the opinions as to its date. In any case the text is probably of the twelfth century, and Grass, 171, after an elaborate grammatical investigation, confirms the opinion of Luzarche, doubted by Littré and others, that it is of Anglo-Norman rather than Norman origin. But, even if the writer was an Anglo-Norman clerk, the play must have been written for performance in France. I doubt if it was ever actually played or finished. It is followed in the MS. by a Norman (not Anglo-Norman) poem on the Fifteen Signs of Judgement (text in Grass, 57), which looks like material collected for an unwritten Sibyl prophecy. The remaining contents of the first part of the MS., which may be of the twelfth century, are some hymns and the Latin Tours Quem quaeritis (p. 38).