THE GROWTH OF THE PASSION-PLA Y 299 



others, being performed at night, it collected, we hear, 

 a great crowd of men and women, a superstition having 

 arisen that those who witnessed the Elevatio would 

 not die within the year. On this account a Synod at 

 Worms in 1316 ordered that the public should be 

 excluded from the office. 1 



(iv.) The Visitatio Sepulchri. The last portion of 

 the scenic Easter ritual was the visitation of the sepulchre 

 by the three Maries. Of this ritual, from its most 

 primitive form in the eleventh-century manuscripts to 

 its growth into an almost independent religious play, 

 Milchsack has collected upwards of thirty examples 

 (see G). In the earliest versions two or three priests 

 clad as women, with cloaks over their surplices and 

 censers in their hands, 2 went between the last response 

 and the Te Deum to the sepulchre, from which, before 

 matins, the elevation had taken place. They chanted : 

 WJio will roll away the stone from the door of the 

 sepulchre? Two persons clothed to represent angels 

 answered from the sepulchre : Whom seek ye in this 

 sepulchre, O worshippers of Christ? The Maries 

 replied : Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified, O Sons of 

 heaven.^ To which came the response : He is not 

 here, he has arisen as he prophesied. The Maries then 

 swung their censers over the sepulchre, and the angels 



1 G, p. 119 footnote. 



2 I have already referred to the miniature reproduced by Mone (B, vol. i. 

 p. 8) of three priests representing the three Maries. A fragment of a Visitatio 

 scene, representing a priest or monk dressed as an angel, with thurible in hand, is 

 built into the wall of the south side of Higham Ferrers Church. 



3 Quern quaeritis in sepulchro, o christicolae ? 

 Jesum Nazarenum crucifixum, o coelicolae ! 



The whole is taken from Mark xvi. 3-7. 



