Note 313 — Chapter XX · THE SECULARIZATION OF THE PLAYS

D’Ancona, i. 218; Guasti, Le feste di San Giovanni Baptista in Firenze (1884). Rappresentazioni on St. John’s day were known to the late fourteenth-century Florentine historian Goro di Stagio Dati. An account of the feast in 1407 makes no mention of them, but they appear in that of 1439, and are elaborately described in the Storia of Matteo di Marco Palmieri about 1454 (D’Ancona, i. 228). Early in the morning of June 22 started a procession of clergy, compagnie, edifizii, and cavalleria. These stopped in the Piazza della Signoria, and rappresentazioni, forming a complete cycle from the Fall of Lucifer to the Last Judgement, and lasting sixteen hours, were given upon the edifizii. D’Ancona suggests that the dumb show type of rappresentazioni preceded the dialogued one, ‘come più semplice.’ But this seems equally inconsistent with his view that the rappresentazioni grew out of devozioni, and mine that they were an adaptation of earlier cyclical plays to the conditions of the Florentine feast.