Parish life in mediæval England

by Francis Aidan Gasquet

There can be no reasonable doubt that such simple dramatic representations of the chief mysteries of religion and the principal events in our Lord’s life, or of some incidents in the lives of the saints, served to impress these truths and fix these events upon the imaginations of the audiences that witnessed them, and to make them in the true sense of the words “vivid realities.” The religious drama was the handmaiden of the Church, and it helped to instruct the people at large and, quite as much as the painted wall or pictured window, formed a “book” ever open and easily understood, graphically setting forth and illustrating truths which formed the groundwork of the formal instruction in the Sunday sermon.

Whatever we may in these days be inclined to think of these simple stories as literary works, or however we may be inclined now to smile at some of the “stage situations” and odd characters, there can be no doubt what the people for whom they were written and acted thought. “In great devotion and discretion,” says the chronicler, “Higden published the story of the Bible, that the simple people might understand in their own language.”

The subjects treated of in these plays were very varied, although those that were acted on the great festivals of Christmas, Easter, the Ascension, etc., generally had some relation to the mystery then celebrated. In such a collection of plays as that known as the Towneley Mysteries, we have examples of the subjects treated of in the religious plays of the period. The collection makes no pretence of being complete, and yet it contains some three and thirty plays, including the Creation, the death of Abel, the story of Noah, the sacrifice of Isaac, and other Old Testament histories; a great number of scenes from the New Testament, such as the Annunciation, the Visitation, Cæsar Augustus, scenes from the Nativity, the Shepherds, the Magi, etc., as well as various scenes from the Passion and Crucifixion, the Parable of the Talents, etc.

Any one who will take the trouble to read—not skim—the plays as printed in this volume cannot fail to be impressed not only with the vivid picture of the special scenes, but by the extensive knowledge of the Bible which the production of these plays must have imparted to those who listened to them, and by the way that, incidentally, the most important religious truths are conveyed in the crude and rugged verse. Again and again, for instance, the entire dependence of all created things upon the providence of God Almighty is asserted and illustrated. Thus, the confession of God’s Omnipotence, put into the mouth of Noah at the beginning of the play of “Noah and his Sons,” contains a profession of belief in the Holy Trinity, and a declaration concerning the work of the Three Persons in the world. It describes the creation of the world; the fall of Lucifer; the sin of our first parents, and their expulsion from Paradise. In the story of Abraham, too, the prayer of the patriarch, with which it begins—

“Adonai, thou God very,

Thou hear us when to Thee we call,

As Thou are He that bset may,

Thou art most succour and help of all,”

gives a complete résumé of the Bible history before the days of Abraham, with the purpose of showing that all things are in God’s hands, and that the complete obedience of all creatures whom He has made is due to Him.

Whatever we may think of these religious dramas now, there can be no doubt that the people in the pre-Reformation days delighted in them, and that they formed one of the most popular features in mediæval parochial life.