“The subject was admirable: imagine a theatre, which the faith of the people made the supplement of their worship; conceive religion, with the sublimity of its dogmas, put on the stage before convinced spectators, then a poet of powerful imagination, able to use freely all these grand things, not reduced to the necessity of stealing a few tears from us by feigned adventures, but striking our souls with the authority of an apostle and the impassioned magic of an artist, addressing what we believe and feel, and making us shed real tears over subjects which seem not only true, but divine—certainly nothing would have been greater than this poetry!”
Such a poet and such poetry Spain possesses in Calderon and his Autos Sacramentales, which may be regarded as the completion and perfection of the religious drama of the Middle Ages.
Of the modern nations which possess a national popular drama, Spain is the only one where, by the side of the secular stage, there has grown up and been carefully cultivated a religious drama; for this, in England, died with the Mysteries and Moralities.
The persistence of the religious drama in Spain is to be explained by the peculiar history of the nation, especially the struggle of centuries with the Moors—a continual crusade fought on their own soil, which inflamed to the highest degree the religious enthusiasm of the people.
The Reformation awoke but a feeble echo in Spain, and only served to quicken the masses to greater devotion to doctrines they saw threatened from abroad.
The two dogmas of the church which have always been especially dear to the Spaniards are those of the Immaculate Conception and Transubstantiation.
The former, as more spiritual and impalpable, remained an article of faith, deep and fervent, only represented to the senses by the mystic masterpieces of Murillo. Transubstantiation, on the other hand, was embodied in a host of symbols and ceremonies, and had devoted to it the most gorgeous of all the festivals of the church—that of Corpus Christi, established in 1263 by Urban IV., formally promulgated by Clement V. in 1311, and fifty years later amplified and rendered more magnificent by John XXIII.
This festival was introduced into Spain during the reign of Alfonso X., and its celebration there, as elsewhere, was accompanied by dramatic representations.
In Barcelona, even earlier than 1314, part of the celebration consisted in a procession of giants and ridiculous figures—a feature, as we shall afterwards see, always retained.
It seems established that from the earliest date dramatic representations of some kind always accompanied the celebration of Corpus Christi.