Young—Officium Pastorum. 
309 
(4) x in die sancTo pasce>, cum om nes simul ccwueneeint in 
ECCLmAM AD MIS SCMl CELEBEANDAm, STENT PAEATI duO 
DIAC Oni INDUTI DALMATICIS EET7'0 ALT are DICENTES I 
Quem qneritis in sepulchre, Xristicole? 
EESPONDEANT duO CANTOEES STANTCS IN CHOEO I 
Iesnm nazarenum crucifixum, o celicole. 
iTem m^coni: 
Xon est hie : surrexit sicut predixerat; 
ite, nunciate qnia resurrexit, dicentes: 
TUNC CANTOf DICAT EXCELSA UOCC: 
Alleluia! resurrexit Dominus. 
Tunc PS alia t scola: 
Resurrexi. 1 2 
Since in these cases the dialogue of the Easter Introit-trope 
is sung at the altar, or even across the altar, one infers that the 
altar is to he regarded as representing the sepulchrum of the 
text. 3 If, then, the altar represents the sepulchre of Christ, it 
is difficult, at first sight, to understand why the [Nativity trope 
should he given this setting, except in misguided imitation of 
the Easter texts. 
A second consideration, however, may serve to absolve the 
authors of the Christmas trope from the stigma of mere blind 
imitation in this detail of mise en scene, for it may be that the 
altar was actually regarded not only as sepuchrum, but also, 
independently, as Proesepe. This possibility appears, in the 
first place, from such an observation as the following from the 
1 Oxford, Bibl. Bodl., MS. Douce 222, Troparium Novaliciense saec. 
xi, fol. 6r-6.v This text has already been published by N. C. Brooks 
(The Journal of English and Germanic Philology , Yol. VIII, 1909, 
pp. 463-464), along with much other valuable material concerning the 
history of the Easter introit trope. 
2 The internal trope of the Introit continues. 
8 As part of a separate study I am preparing a discussion of the 
Easter Introit-trope Quem quaeritis as found in some thirty manu¬ 
scripts, and of the altar mise en scene now before us. From the 
history of the Christian altar it is, evidently, not difficult to demon¬ 
strate that altare was regarded not only as 8epulchrum Sancti, but 
also as Sepulchrum Christi, and one easily infers, from the rubrics of 
the Easter Introit-tropes and of the dramatic Visitationes Sepulchri, 
that the primitive “Easter Sepulchre” was the altar itself. 
