CONFRÉRIE DE LA PASSION
. Most religious confraternities in France considered organizing performances of plays as
supplementary to their main raison d’être. The Paris Confrérie de la Passion was,
however, established primarily to put on mystery plays, either on the Passion or the
Resurrection, or other saint plays. Their statutes, approved by Charles VI, who had seen
their plays earlier, were published in 1402. Their activities originally centered on the hall
and courtyard of the Hôpital de la Trinité, but by 1538 they were also using the Hôtel de
Flandre. From 1548, they occupied the well-known Hôtel de Bourgogne. In spite of the
terms of their statutes, it seems certain that they also performed comic as well as religious
plays. Some of these performances took place indoors, in the Hôpital de la Trinité, on a
stage estimated to have measured about 40 by 20 feet; others were clearly outdoors, in a
theater in the round. The Confrérie must have had a repertoire of plays, but only one
surviving manu-script, of the anonymous Vie de saint Louis (Paris, ca. 1470; three days,
19,000 lines), bears an explicit mention of the society. Its best-documented performances
date from the middle of the 16th century, when several large-scale mysteries were
organized at the Hôtel de Flandre. In 1539, a Passion play was put on; a description of the
montre of the preceding day has survived. In 1541, the Confrères presented the Actes des
Apôtres, which took four months of rehearsals, and whose performance extended over
thirtyfive days from May 8 to September 25. The following year, 1542, they put on a
similar massive play, the Mistère du Viel Testament, which started on May 9 and ended
October 22. This successful performance led to the printing of the 50,000-line text,
several copies of which have survived. Contemporary documents contain descriptions of
certain aspects of these productions.
In 1548, the Parlement de Paris published its edict forbidding the performance of
mystères sacrés; in the same year, the Confrérie moved to the Hôtel de Bourgogne and
continued to put on plays, though now entitled comédies and tragi-comédies. Though the
Paris edict had little immediate effect in the provinces, the Confrérie de la Passion, as it
had done from its foundation in 1402, changed with the times. Its history is a microcosm
of the history of medieval French drama.
Graham A.Runnalls
[See also: BASOCHE; MYSTERY PLAYS; THEATER]
Frank, Grace. The Medieval French Drama. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1960.
Petit de Julleville, Louis. Les mystères. 2 vols. Paris: Hachette, 1880, Vol. 1, pp. 412–39.
Rey-Flaud, Henri. Le cercle magique. Paris: Gallimard, 1973, pp. 230–53.
CONGÉ
. The congé, or farewell poem, was a literary genre specific to the town of Arras in the
13th century. In 1202, Jehan Bodel, and in 1272, Baude Fastoul, both suffering from
leprosy, sent their fellow citizens a poem to demander or rover congié (“ask for
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