THE CONTENTS OF THE PASSION-PLA Y 393 



devils run screaming hither and thither. Christ lays 

 chains upon Lucifer. 1 Adam and Eve greet their 

 Saviour with joy, and the procession of patriarchs and 

 prophets being formed, it departs singing Jesu, nostra 

 redemptio. 2 Several comic incidents are introduced. A 

 poor scholar, who instead of going to mass had lain 

 about on the school-benches, expresses his joy at deliver- 

 ance. Several damned souls appeal in vain for mercy ; 

 they are pitchforked back into hell by the devils. Satan 

 tries to retain one of the saved souls, generally John 

 the Baptist, because no one could desire to save so 

 meanly clad a man, but he meets, as usual, with discom- 

 fiture. When Christ has departed, and the devils have 

 recovered their presence of mind, they take counsel as to 

 the restocking of hell, and then follow the soul-lists and 

 the dance of devils to which I have referred above 

 (p. 340). 3 On a par with the defeat of the devils is 



1 Besides the passion-play references to the chaining of Lucifer, we may note 

 the miniatures of the Ccedmon Codex, reproduced with much other information 

 by G. Stephens in his Northern Mythology, 1883, pp. 333 et seq., 338, 384, etc. 

 See also Legends of the Holy Rood, E.E.T.S., p. 5 ; Old English Miscellany, 

 E.E.T.S., p. 67 ; Jubinal, Mysteres ineUits, vol. ii. p. 294 ; Toivnley Mysteries, 

 pp. 251, 252 (" Nay, tratur, thou shall won in wo, And tille a stake I shall the 

 bynde "). St. Michael's chaining and locking up the Devil will be found in 

 Albrecht Diirer's Apocalypse ; in Scheifelin's cuts to Schonsperger's reproduc- 

 tion in 1523 of Luther's New Testament, etc. The binding of the Devil and 

 his supposed loosing after a thousand years are, slight as they may seem, the 

 keys to much of mediaeval thought. The solutio diaboli occurred about the 

 twelfth century, and was notably the basis of Wyclif s attack on Rome. " Bifore 

 the fend was losid " all went well ; post solutionem Sathanae all heresies had 

 arisen (see Trialogus, ed. Lechler, pp. 153, 249 ; Select Works, ed. Arnold, 

 vol. i. p. 153, and vol. iii. p. 502). The notion was of course adopted by Hus. 

 " Post millenarium soluto Satana," he writes in his De Ecclesia, cap. xxiii. p. 

 221, ed. 1520. 



2 There is a characteristic representation of this procession in the Schatz- 

 behalter, Fig. 79. All the redeemed are nude, as appears to have been the case 

 on the passion-play stage : see p. 330. 



3 See B, vol. ii. pp. 42-57 ; H, vol. ii. p. 68 ; A, p. 116 ; F, pp. 286-293 ; C, 

 pp. 222-230 ; L, vol. ii. p. 303 ; D, pp. 81-91 : I, p. 141. 



