330 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLAY 



hair, and in some few cases with a red beard, 1 which 

 is, however, usually the attribute of Judas. 2 God 

 the Father appeared either as an emperor, or with 

 the triple crown of the pope and priestly robes. The 

 disciples wore the usual mediaeval costume, Peter 

 having a bald pate, and probably a limp. 3 The devils, 

 from Lucifer and Satan down to Happa and Puck, we 

 may reasonably suppose to have been dressed according 

 to the mediaeval demon conception, i.e. with all the dis- 

 tortions and contortions of Stephan Lochner's perhaps 

 unequalled Day of Judgment in the Cologne Gallery 

 (see the frontispiece to this volume), the block-book 

 Ars Moriendi, or Albrecht Diirer's woodcut of the 

 descent into hell. 4 The patriarchs and prophets, when 

 rescued from the lower regions, are to be clothed in 

 white shirts ' as spirits,' or else go naked, which is 

 certainly to be the condition of our first parents and 

 of the massacred innocents ("vil kleiner kinder gantz 



1 The old English mysteries gave both God the Father and God the Son golden 

 hair. For a red beard see B, ii. p. 291, and Didron, Iconographie chrttienne, 

 p. 577. The authority for Christ's hair, etc., is probably the apocryphal 

 Epistola Lentuli ad Caesarem. John of Damascus gives a different description ; 

 Christ had a black beard, and resembled his mother (Opera, vol. i. p. 630). Accord- 

 ing to the Tyrolese Ludus de ascensione domini (ed. Pichler, p. 9), he was in per- 

 son and face like James the Greater. The Plenarium, published in 1473, probably 

 by Zainer in Augsburg, gives a fine full-length cut of Christ on its first pages, 

 and tells us that this exactly represents the hair, beard, and clothes of Christ, 

 as he walked with bare feet on earth ; further, his head was longer than that of 

 any other human being. For some discussion of the mediaeval Christ-portraits see 

 K. Pearson, Die Fronica, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Christbildes im Mittelalter, 

 Strasburg, 1886. 



2 For Judas' hair see F, p. 108. The notion that the red-haired man is neces- 

 sarily wicked is strongly insisted on in the Middle Ages. Thus in the Proverbs 

 of Alfred (Old English Miscellany, E.E.T.S.), 1. 702, "He is cocker, >ef and 

 horeling, scolde, of wreckedome he is king." 



3 K, p. 117, vide infra. 



4 H, vol. ii. p. 17. Lucifer and his comrades put on Teufelskleider before their 

 fight with the angels. 



