CHARACTERISA TION IN THE PASSION-PLA Y 359 



boasts to Lucifer that he has brought about the death of 

 Christ, but the next moment the same Christ is thunder- 

 ing at hell -gates. He runs off with a priest who is 

 saying mass, but the priest exorcises him and drives 

 him into a wild ravine, where even Lucifer is glad to 

 be free of him for a time. 1 He brings a lawsuit against 

 humanity, but mercy is stronger than justice, and he 

 is dismissed with costs. 2 On all occasions the devil of 

 mediaeval drama is a part which verges on broad farce. 

 There is only the one glimpse, which is lost almost at 

 once, of a Prometheus or Loki type. And yet, if the 

 reader would understand the Middle Ages, he must realise 

 that the folk, like Luther, believed in and feared the 

 Devil, even while they strove to laugh at him. 



Of the minor characters, Judas fills the familiar part 

 of the melodramatic stage- villain, even to a black nimbus. 

 No attempt whatever is made to analyse the motives 

 which may have led to his supposed treachery. The 

 passion-play Judas is simply the incarnation of evil, 

 and, beyond delight in ill-doing, without a reason for 



1 See B, vol. ii. p. 100. The Gospel of Nicodemus, chap, xv., is, of course, 

 the source of some of the mediaeval conceptions. 



2 The lawsuit, Satan versus Humanity, was a frequent allegory. Thus we 

 have Peter Mechel's play, Ein schon Gespreche, darinnen der Sathan Anklager des 

 gantzen menschliclien Geschleclits ist, etc. The basis of Mechel's play, as of several 

 others of like character, was Jakob von Teramo's Belial, Processes Luciferi contra 

 Jesum Christum. This was written about 1400, but first printed by Zainer in 1472. 

 See also Coventry Mysteries, xi. In a still-acted peasant play, Das Paradiesspiel 

 (Weinhold, IVeihnachtspiele], when Mercy has won the lawsuit, Christ beats the 

 Devil about the shoulders with his cross back to hell. This might appear to the 

 reader as a modern innovation in the worst taste, but it has really great antiquity. 

 The conception is, in England at least, as old as the fourteenth century. Thus in 

 the Disputacio inter Mariam et Crucem (Legends of the Holy Rood, E.E.T.S., p. 

 131), we find : 



Til ]je crosses dunt 5af him a daunt. 1. 428. 

 Cristes Cros ha]? craked his crown. 1. 287. 

 PC Cros I calle J>e heerdes 3erde, 



]>e deuel a dunt he 5af. 1. 295. 



