THE CONTENTS OF THE PASSION-PLA Y 383 



both action and language ; the bullies strike till they 

 break their rods, they fall to the ground in sheer 

 exhaustion, and refresh themselves from Barabbas's wine- 

 flask. The crown of thorns, precisely as in the wood- 

 cuts, is forced into the flesh by long rods pulled 

 downwards at either end by the Jewish persecutors. 1 

 In the condition due to such torture a condition repre- 

 sented with painful realism by some modern as well as 

 mediaeval passion-plays Pilate leads Jesus to a window, 

 and shows him to the people to excite sympathy, Ecce 

 homo ! The Jews will listen neither to Pilate's words, 

 nor to his sighs. Even the intercession of his wife 

 Pilatessa (occasionally called Portula, queen of Hana- 

 laps) to whom Belial or Satan has appeared in a 

 threatening dream with the view of hindering the work 

 of redemption cannot stay the judgment. The Jews 

 lay stress on the Emperor's displeasure. Pilate breaks 

 his staff, 2 with much ceremony washes his hands, and 



1 Besides the pictures to which I have referred on p. 263, I may notice that 

 the earliest engraving of these stakes which I have come across occurs in a 

 unique Leiden Christi at Munich from about 1460. Some account will be found 

 in Stoeger, Zwei der dltesten deutschen Druckdenkmaler, Munich, 1833. See 

 also Coventry Mysteries, p. 316. 



2 In Holbein's Todtentanz the staff of the judge is broken by Death. The 

 staff was in northern mythology the symbol in the hands of the gods of their 

 power over living and dead (see Simrock, Deutsche Mythologie, 1878, p. 178). The 

 judge in nearly all mediaeval woodcuts is represented with a staff, and the staff 

 was raised when an oath was taken ; its modern equivalent is the judge's mace. 

 In most of the cuts of the Layenspiegel (1544), the judge is represented as 

 holding the staff vertically in his hand. The same conception will be found in 

 the cuts of the Bambergische Halsgerichts Ordnung, 1531 (even the fool as 

 judge has a staff!), and of Karl V.'s Peinlich Halsgericht, Frankfurt, 1577, 

 and indeed of all old German law-books. See also the second cut of Zainer's 

 Schachzabelbuch of 1477, and a cut from 1442 in Holtrop : Monuments typo- 

 graphiques des Pays-Bas, p. 40. Nearly all the great series of Passion cuts 

 represent Pilate with the staff. In a peasant Three Kings play taken from oral 

 tradition (in 1875), 'Conscience' tells Herod he cannot hope for grace: 'Der 

 stab ist gebrochen,' i.e. he is condemned (see Rosenheimer Dreikonig spiel in R). 



