medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear Laura,
You might try Dunbar H. Ogden's _The Staging of Drama in the Medieval
Church_, U of Delaware Press, 2002.
Best,
Erick Kelemen
On Friday, October 14, 2005, at 11:15 AM, Laura Jacobus wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
> culture
>
> Dear John,
>
> I don't know the answer to your question, but if a reference comes to
> light maybe I'll get back to you. The 'gradually' bit is sloppy and I
> should definitely get rid of it. I do remember going to a talk by
> Johannes Tripps where he mentioned how one German monastery was
> compelled to put on a public performance of its drama only because the
> crowd was practically rioting at the gates. There are also early-ish
> church dramas (egs from Young include 13thC officium stellae, ordo
> rachelis) where the rubrics make it clear that the action went on at
> least in part in the nave. The whole notion of a line of
> chronological development, gradual or otherwise, from performance in
> choir to performance in nave is probably not useful given the huge
> regional variations and difficulties in dating texts. But still, I
> need to know if it's fair to say that 'most (or even 'many') early
> church dramas were originally perfomed by and for the clergy in the
> privacy of their choirs'. Or does anyone think they weren't?
>
> all best
>
> Laura
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Dillon"
> <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: 14 October 2005 16:29
> Subject: Re: church dramas
>
>
>> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
>> culture
>>
>> Dear Laura,
>>
>> I can't help you with the reference, but I do have a question
>> about "the only gradually" part of your oversimplification.
>>
>> The earliest church dramas we have from today's Italy that are of any
>> substantial length (i.e., longer than the very brief exchanges of the
>> _Quem quaeritis_ trope) are all of the twelfth century. Two of these
>> are relatively brief and also poorly dated: a version of the Easter
>> play _Peregrinus_ and the _Officium stellae_, an Epiphany play of
>> Herod. The provenance of both of these is Sicilian and, if memory
>> serves, from cathedral liturgies; they're entirely in Latin.
>>
>> From the middle of the same century, though, we have, from south
>> central Italy, the incompletely preserved _Montecassino Passion Play_,
>> whose surviving text, hitherto entirely in Latin, breaks off in the
>> initial lines of a _planctus Mariae_ in _volgare_. And from late in
>> the same century we have the _Greater Carmina Burana Passion Play_,
>> now
>> thought most likely to have come from a monastery in the vicinity of
>> Bressanone (Brixen) in the South Tirol; this has many lines in German.
>>
>> It seems quite possible that, in monastic communities in some parts of
>> Europe, church plays partly accessible to the non-Latinate laity
>> developed _rapidly_. But these parts of Europe may have been
>> latecomers to the overall development of this genre. Was the gradual
>> shift of which you were speaking already taking place in the late
>> eleventh and very early twelfth centuries?
>>
>> Best,
>> John Dillon
>>
>> On Friday, October 14, 2005, at 8:36 am, Laura Jacobus wrote:
>>
>>> In the course of somethng I'm writing at the moment, I blithely
>>> wrote that 'most early church dramas were originally perfomed by
>>> and for the clergy in the privacy of their choirs, only gradually
>>> becoming accessible to the laity in the nave'. Something of an
>>> oversimplification I know, but now I cannot find any reference to
>>> this idea, though I'm sure I haven't just made it up! I thought I
>>> got it from Young's Drama of the M/E Church, where I thought it
>>> was coupled with the idea was that the dramas could be understood
>>> as a form of participatory devotion- but can't find it there
>>> now! Does this idea ring any bells?
>>>
>>> Laura
>>
>>
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