might produce a play about its patron on one or two occasions, the larger towns generally
had regular productions that intermingled the shorter, and therefore cheaper, saint plays
with the elaborate and expensive Passion plays. Although evidence exists for plays being
put on in many parts of France, they are most common in the northern area and in the
southeastern provinces of Savoy and Dauphiné.
Comedy provides an important contrast to the elevated mixture of sermons and
suffering that make up many saint plays. Diableries, or devil scenes, are as common as in
the Passion plays. There are also many instances of the introduction of a single character,
a simpleton (fou, sot) or peasant (vilain, rusticus), who acts as a humorous, sometimes
satirical, often obscene chorus to the action or who takes part in comic scenes of
misunderstanding with messengers. Comic also are the jailers and torturers, who figure
largely in the popular martyrdom plays and who work the complicated special effects for
beheading, boiling in oil, or tearing apart by wild horses.
The more historical type of play features the saint preserving his or her native city
from pagan invaders. The two surviving plays on St. Louis, king of France, provide
interesting contrasts here. The anonymous 15th-century play stresses the king’s conflict
with the English, an obviously appealing subject in the aftermath of the Hundred Years’
War; the early 16th-century play by Pierre Gringore lays greater emphasis on Louis’s
defense of the church against the German emperor Frederick. Plays like the Mystère de
saint Bernard, on the founding of the famous hospice at the Great Saint-Bernard Pass,
probably reflect the importance of travel and pilgrimage in the 15th century. Numerous
scenes depict journeys by boat or on horseback and offer other touches of contemporary
realism, even in the plays that purport to be set in biblical times. It is this element of
personal, local, or national involvement that gives the saint plays their unique flavor and
justifies treating them as a distinct dramatic genre.
Lynette R.Muir
[See also: GRINGORE, PIERRE; MIRACLE PLAYS; MYSTERY PLAYS;
PASSION PLAYS; SAINTS’ LIVES; THEATRE]
Muir, Lynette R. “The Saint Play in Medieval France.” In The Saint Play in Medieval Europe, ed.
Clifford Davidson. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1986.
Petit de Julleville, Louis. Les mystères. 2 vols. Paris: Hachette, 1880.
SAINT-AIGNAN-SUR-CHER
. From the 10th century, Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher (Loir-et-Cher) was the center of an
important castellany dependent on the counts of Blois. Eudes I, count of Blois (r. 976–
96), constructed a castle here in the 9th century. Conflicting sources date the church of
Saint-Aignan to either the 8th or 9th century, with one source suggesting the consecration
of a church by monks from Saint-Martin of Tours.
In the 12th century, the church at Saint-Aignan housed a chapter of secular canons as
well as a parish and was dependent on the archbishop of Bourges. The crypt mirrors the
upper church, with ambulatory and three apsidal chapels, and extends one bay in length,
with side aisles. Romanesque and some Gothic wall paintings survive from the last
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1572