346 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



discovery of excruciating tortures. The nails used at 

 the crucifixion must be blunt, the holes drilled in the 

 cross must be too far apart, so that a rope is needed to 

 stretch the sufferer's frame. 1 



Nor were the artists one whit behind the play- 

 wrights. The faces of the torturers in a mediaeval 

 woodcut or painting are such as we associate with the 

 vilest dregs of society. In the pictures we have no 

 difficulty in recognising the murderer Barabbas and the 

 ingrate Malchus of the passion-plays. Even the passion 

 scenes of Diirer, Holbein, and Cranach are studies in 

 criminal physiognomy. 2 As I have already pointed out, 

 what the mediaeval man thought ill of, that he painted 

 in the blackest colours. Thus Judas must have com- 

 mitted parricide as well as incest in the ' kingdom of 

 Senary ot,' while Pilate's crimes from his youth upwards 

 were of the most abominable character. 3 Once or twice 

 the real source of the feeling in the plays and pictures 

 comes more nearly to expression, as when the Conclusor, 

 at the end of the second day of the Egerer Spiel, calls 

 upon princes and nobles to remember that the Jews, 

 whom they now favour, belong to the race who tortured 



1 D, p. 63 ; F, p. 211 ; K, p. 53 ; Townley Mysteries, pp. 219, 220, and gener- 

 ally the Colipliizacio and Flagellacio, Coventry Mysteries, p. 319 ; Chester 

 Mysteries, pp. 36, 58. 



2 See, for example, Diirer's two woodcut passions ; Cranach's Passional Christi 

 et Antichristi (Cut 3), and his illustrations to Luther's Bible ; Woltmann's 

 Holbein, pp. 53, 132, 133 ; and compare these with F, pp. 168, 176, 198, 199 : E, p. 

 181 ; B, vol. ii. p. 275, etc. ; K, pp. 41, 42 ; D, pp. 33, 62. Perhaps the most 

 curious exhibition of the feeling I have come across was in the Paznauner Thai 

 twelve years ago, where I found a torture-scene by the wayside with the Christ a 

 diminutive man and the Jewish torturers horrible giants of the Gog and Magog 

 type. The design at least appeared very antique. 



3 Compare inter alia as to Judas, K, p. 69 ; Townley Mysteries, Suspensio 

 Judae, p. 328 ; and as to Pilate, Massmann, Deutsche Gedichte des 12 tcn Jahrh.. 

 p. 145. 



