THE GROWTH OF THE PASSION-PLAY 285 



them by virgin saints of chaste and holy life. Again 

 what happened ? The folk at once found a field for its 

 old polytheistic tendencies, local goddesses reappeared 

 as Christian saints, but with them came back many of 

 the old folk-festivals, and much of the old sexual cult. 1 

 As in these cases, so it was with the dramatic ritual. It 

 was intended as a solemn scenic effect to counteract 

 heathen habits ; but the folk flocked into the churches, 

 took possession of the ritual, and added to it the dancing, 

 the feasting, and the humour which characterise the 

 passion-play. Thus in three typical cases we see the 

 folk moulding oriental Christianity to its own spirit, 

 and making a foreign religion something peculiar and 

 relative to itself. 



Nor is the view here expressed simply that of a critic 

 writing many centuries later with but an obscure record 

 of what actually took place in the early days of Germanic 

 Christianity. A writer of much insight, nearer by seven 

 centuries to that folk-struggle for religious festival and 

 dramatic ritual, held much the same opinion. There 

 is an apparently neglected passage in Herrad von 

 Landsberg's great work, the Hortus Deliciarum, which 

 runs thus : 



The old Fathers of the Church, in order to strengthen the belief 

 of the faithful and to attract the unbeliever by this manner of 

 religious service, rightly instituted at the feast of the Epiphany or 

 the Octave religious performances of such a kind as the star guiding 

 the Magi to the new-born Christ, the cruelty of Herod, the dispatch 

 of the soldiers, the lying-in of the Blessed Virgin, the angel warning 



1 In other essays of this volume some references will be found to the Kirmes 

 and the local goddess as Christian saint (see pp. 19, 25), but I hope on another 

 occasion to deal more fully with these topics. 



