Charles Daoidson — English Mystery Plays. 167 



appear, transported to the colonies in France. At any rate the 

 religious festivities of the holiday season in the Roman church were 

 so closely copied in France as to argue a similar prepafation through 

 the existing customs of the people. The rural unformed comedy, 

 continuing among the people simultaneously with these ecclesiastical 

 festivities, naturally drew nearer to them as they became more 

 dramatic in character, and imparted to them color and license 

 wherever entrance could be obtained. This was the easier to accom- 

 plish, since both were the expression of joy and gaiety. 



It becomes, therefore, less strange that the feast of St. Stephen, 

 which was under the charge of the young deacons, or the Day of 

 the Holy Innocents, which belonged to the choir boys, should more 

 and more incline to the buffoonery of the holiday time until it 

 became the reproach of the church. That these and the custom of- 

 the Boy Bishop and the Feast of the Ass were originally devotional 

 in character, and that their degeneration took place through outside 

 influences and in spite of the church, are easy to prove. In the 

 Limoges ritual we find the Feast of the Innocents in the days of its 

 innocence, and the Boy Bishop, when he first appears in the thir- 

 teenth century Freising play of the Nativity,' is a very proper 

 person. 



The course of development of the Feast of the Ass demonstrates 

 from another side the intimate connection of all Mystery plays with 

 the church services, and the impossibility of attributing the rise of 

 every play to any one portion of the service. In the Middle Ages a 

 reputed sermon of St. Augustine formed one of the lessons of 

 Christmas.'^ It was not delivered as a sermon, but declaimed as a 

 species of dramatic chant, and was very popular. It cited all the 

 Old Testament witnesses to the coming of Christ, together with 

 Virgil, the Sibyl, and such others as were believed to have foretold 

 the Savior's advent. It was highly dramatic in form, summoning each 

 witness to give his testimony ; thus it was but a step forward when 

 persons differently habited gave the responses. This literary idea 

 found epic expression in the Old English Elene' as early as the ninth 

 century, and dramatic form in The Prophets of Christ of the twelfth 

 century, as appended to the Drama of the Foolish Virgins in the 



inveni; quamquam in ea opinione sim, nunquam ita excidisse veterum Latinorum His- 



trionicam Artcra, ut abolita prorsus fuerit apiid Italos ejus memoria atque usus 



Arbitror etiam, aliquid inconditac Comoedia3 semper t uisse Italis Muratori Auti- 



quitates, vol. 2, col. 847. 



d. Julleville, les Comediens en France au Moyen Age, p. 17. 



1 Julleville, vol. 1, p. 42. 2 Julleville, vol. 1, p, 35. 3 Cynewulf s Elene, 1. 3:57 «'. 



