332 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



famous ATS Moriendi block -book, where the angel 

 carries off the soul of the dying man. The reader who 

 will consider the mediaeval notions of hell and the soul 

 as illustrated in the passion-play, will recognise how 

 much the mediseval spirit added to primitive Chris- 

 tianity, and how much of that addition has remained 

 current in folk-belief even to the present day. 



To the costumes already given we may add that of 

 Mary Magdalen who, while in g audio, is gaily be- 

 decked with trinkets, and appears superbo liabitu and 

 of John the Baptist, who is very meanly clad in a skin. 

 Indeed, so meanly is John clad that the devil Tuteville 

 tries to keep him in hell, considering that Christ could 

 not possibly want to rescue such a miserably clad person. 1 

 This is all the material I have been able to find in 

 the earlier plays bearing on costume. A good many 

 details of stage and wardrobe expenses in the sixteenth 

 and seventeenth centuries are given by Hartmann 

 (T, pp. 404, 426, etc.) The painting and dyeing of 

 Teufelsldeider seems to have been a relatively large 

 item. A few costumes from more recent peasant plays 

 doubtless traditional in their naivete may interest 

 the reader. Mary appears in an old-fashioned blue 



picture at Prag by Holbein the Elder (Woltmann, Holbein, p. 82). In the 

 famous Triumph of Death, in the Camposanto at Pisa, angels and devils are 

 fighting for souls represented by little children. Angels and devils remove little 

 naked figures from the mouths of the dying in the curious drawings of the 

 Heidelberg MS. (No. 438) (see Geffcken, Bildercatechismus, Appendix, col. 15). 

 St. Michael and the Devil fighting for a like soul issuing from the mouth of 

 a corpse occurs in a French Home known to me. Upon the buttress of the west 

 porch of Rheims Cathedral the souls of the martyrs appear as naked and sexless 

 little children. The soul of St. Martin on a window at Chartres, and that of St. 

 Calminius on one at Mauzac, are represented by naked infants. The souls of the 

 blessed are thus represented in the hands of God (see Didron, Iconographie 

 chretiemie, pp. 124, 134, 210, 243). 



1 C, p. 55 ; J, p. 98 ; I, p. 117 ; B, vol. ii. p. 56 ; and compare S, p. 142. 



