influence and filiation. The most satisfactory way of grouping French Passion plays is
according to a mixture of chronology and province of origin.
The Passion du Palatinus (Burgundy, late 13th or early 14th c.; 2,000 lines), the oldest
complete Passion, dramatizes only the events of Holy Week and is heavily based,
especially in the first half, on the Passion des jongleurs; but it has an unusual Harrowing
of Hell and includes lengthy lamentations by the Virgin Mary and the three Marys.
Except for these lyrical passages, the play is fastmoving and depends much on mime. The
system of mnemonic rhyme used in other 13th-century plays and in all other Passion
plays is absent here. Variants of the text are found in the 15th-century manuscript of the
Passion d’Autun and in the Fragment de Sion. Though it clearly influenced several later
plays, the view that the Passion du Palatinus was the single source of all Passions is
contradicted by the recent discovery, in the Leiden University Library, of a fragment of a
different version of the Crucifixion, also dating from the late 13th century.
The Passion play in the Paris Sainte-Geneviève Library, usually referred to as the
Passion Sainte-Geneviève (Paris, ca. 1380; 4,500 lines), though covering largely the same
events as the Passion du Palatinus, reveals little direct influence of the latter. Its text,
often based closely on the Bible and on the Gospel of Nicodemus, has episodes not in
Palatinus: the raising of Lazarus, Lazarus’s account of his visit to Hell, the Veronica
episode, and the allegorical debate between Ecclesia and Synagoga. The manuscript that
preserves this text contains other religious plays and is probably the repertoire of a
confrérie. The Confrérie Sainte-Geneviève du Mont is a more likely candidate than the
Parisian Confrérie de la Passion. A fragment of a revision of the Passion Sainte-
Geneviève has also been found in Troyes.
The Passion de Semur (Semur-en-Bourgogne; 9,000 lines; two days) survives in a
manuscript of 1488, the last in a series of reworkings of an original text that goes back
probably to the early 15th century. General resemblances and textual echoes encourage
some critics to see the influence of the Passion du Palatinus, also Burgundian. The
present revised text is divided into two days, though earlier versions were not. The first
day includes the Creation and some other Old Testament episodes, the marriage of the
Virgin Mary, and the Nativity and ends with the temptation of Jesus. Day 2 takes us from
the summoning of the Apostles, through several of Jesus’s miracles, the events of Holy
Week, concluding with Jesus’s appearances to his disciples. The most notable feature of
the Passion de Semur is its wide range of register; juxtaposed to sermons, Latin hymns,
and allegorical episodes are scenes of comedy and great vulgarity, the most striking
example of which is the character of Rusticus, a transformation of one of Noah’s sons,
who reappears at regular intervals throughout the play and engages in foul-mouthed
conversations with wellestablished Passion play characters.
The Passion d’Arras (Arras, 1430–40; 25,000 lines; four days), usually attributed to
Eustache Marcadé, is the first to extend over four long days and to use the framework of
the Procès de paradis. It uses no Old Testament material. Day 1 deals with the nativity
and childhood of Christ, Day 2 with the public life, Day 3 with the Passion, and Day 4
with the Resurrection and Ascension. The length of the text is due mainly to the author’s
natural prolixity, to sermons, and to the expansion of secondary episodes. The surviving
manuscript also contains a three-day Vengeance play, which would sometimes have been
performed after the Passion d’Arras.
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