The English Moral Plays 307 
is fofmed; the Jew who would dishonor the bier is smitten from 
heaven. These are some of the plainly suggested dramatic situations 
that transform the sermon into a little drama.' 
In exactly the same spirit, Bernard preached on the text, “ Filiz 
Jerusalem, nuntiate dilecto quia amore langueo.”? After first ex- 
plaining the different methods of treating such a subject, the preacher 
sketches for his hearers the scene, showing Mary on her sick-bed 
with the angels about her. He then rehearses the conversation 
that might have passed between them. The angels ask Mary why 
she has not been seen recently on Calvary or the Mount of Olives, 
or at the tomb. She gives at first a brief reply in the words of 
the text, “I am languishing.” “Of what do you languish?” the 
angels inquire. “How can sickness trouble the body in which the 
salvation of the world has rested?” Thereupon Mary, in longer, 
slower speech, tells them that she is dying not of grief or pain, 
but for love of her Son, who, she knows, will not forget her. There- 
upon the angels, returning to heaven, report to Christ what they 
have learned. As the scene thus changes to heaven, with one of 
his customary transitions, “ Quid putamus Jesum nisi tale aliquid 
locutum?” the preacher returns again to dialogue, as Jesus sup- 
posedly assures the angels that he, whose gospel is love, will not 
forsake his own. Perhaps this brief outline will indicate how dra- 
matic in spirit the sermon is; it contains a definite suggestion of the 
scene, brisk dialogue, and an effective close. 
The fact is too little noted in the study of the origins of the 
sacred drama that at the time tropes were bringing the dramatic 
portrayal of sacred history to the altar, sermons were being delivered 
on the same themes and in exactly the same spirit.2 But these 
narrative sermons in dialogue were not restricted to Bible story ; 
one significant example of an original dramatic situation is found 
in Bernard’s address on Saint Clement.4 The speaker reminds his 
hearers that the saint was ready to sacrifice his worldly position 

1 The source of this sermon is the apocryphal De Transitu Mariae. 
2 Cantic. 5. 8. Patr. Lat., 185. 190-93. Bourgain, 211, attributes the 
sermon to Guerrie d’Igni. Bourgain, 3875-85, prints a sermon by Anselm 
on the Resurrection. 
’ The sermon, once attributed to Augustine, in which the prophets, 
one after another, rehearse on the request of the preacher their testimony 
of the Christ to come, was read as a part of the Christmas service. It was, 
then, not a sermon in the sense in which we are using the word. See 
Sepet, Les Prophétes du Christ, 3. 10. 
* Guvres Completes, 3. 468—70. 
Trans. Conn. Acap., Vol. XIV. 21 Marca, 1910. 
