510 mystery and miracle plays
See also ANTIPHONS; ARS ANTIQUA AND ARS NOVA;
GOLIARDIC POETS; GREGORIAN CHANT; HYMNS, HYMNALS,
AND HYMNOLOGY;MACHAUT,GUILLAUME DE; MOTETS;
POLYPHONY; TROUBADOURS.
Further reading:See the numerous detailed articles on
“Music” “Musical Notation,” and “Musical Treatises” in the
DMA8.550–649 and several others in Encyclopedia of the
Renaissance,ed. Paul F. Grendler (New York: Charles Scrib-
ner’s Sons, 1999) 4.200–268; Richard Crocker and David
Hiley, eds., The Early Middle Ages to 1300,2d ed. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1990); Gareth Curtis, “Music,” in
The New Cambridge Medieval History,Vol. 7, c. 1415–c.
1500,ed. Christopher Allmand (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), 319–333; Tess Knighton and
David Fallows, eds., Companion to Medieval and Renais-
sance Music (London: Dent, 1992); James McKinnon,
Music in Early Christian Literature(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987); Gustave Reese, Music in the Middle
Ages, with an Introduction on the Music of Ancient Times
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1940); M. L. Switten, Music and
Poetry in the Middle Ages: A Guide to Research on French and
Occitan Song, 1100–1400(New York: Garland, 1995).
mystery and miracle plays Mystery and miracle plays
were the common form of religious drama during the Mid-
dle Ages. Usually performed in front of churches, they
were dramatic presentations of stories from the New Testa-
ment or were tied to specific liturgical feasts. The English
VERNACULARmystery or Corpus Christi plays were rela-
tively late developments in the Middle Ages, belonging to
the 15th century. More than 100 English cities and towns
staged single pageants or consecutive cycles of five to 48
separate pageants. There are four major English cycles,
those from YORK, Chester, Wakefield (Towneley), and the
N-Town which was not tied to a particular town. Some
cycles are closely related through parallel pageants, and
borrowing seems to have taken place also.
STAGINGThe staging of the civic cycles was in the hands of the
GUILDSof MERCHANTSand craftsmen. These associations
or CONFRATERNITIESof LAITYwere known as mysteries,
thence the name mystery play.The guilds took responsi-
bility for the preparations for and entire staging of the
plays, sometimes placing chief responsibility in the
hands of one person. Each guild chose a subject that fit-
ted its craft or calling and may sometimes have even
commissioned a new composition. The various roles
were regularly played in successive years by the same
actors, sometimes from other towns. The written texts
were sometimes checked against performance, revised,
or even reassigned to different guilds. The cycles were
played in the open, at set points in the city, either on
pageants (pagine), consisting of roofed stages on wheels
moved from point to point, or on fixed stages. Stage
machinery was used and costumes were worn, including
masks, wigs, robes, crowns, a rib for the creation of Eve,
skin-tight white leather suits for the naked Adam and
Eve, and a close-fitting skin for the serpent in Eden.THEMES
Presenting stories of the Old Testament and a culmination
in the New, these plays usually emphasized the devil’s
temptations of Adam and Eve prefiguring his temptations
of Christ, Noah’s saving beings from the flood suggesting
Christ as savior of humankind, and Abraham’s sacrifice of
his son, Isaac, foreshadowing the Crucifixion. Often sto-
ries from the recognized BIBLEwere supplemented by oth-
ers from familiar apocryphal New Testament books. The
actors were usually male. The plays were written in
rhymed verse reinforced by alliteration.
Further reading:Peter Happé. ed. and trans., English
Mystery Plays: A Selection (Baltimore: Penguin Books,
1975); Rosemary Woolf, The English Mystery Plays
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972); Richard
P. Axton, Medieval French Plays,trans. Richard Axton and
John Stevens (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1971).mysticism, Christian In the Early Middle Ages mysti-
cismvaguely designated contemplation on the mysteries
of the faith. In the late Middle Ages, the term much more
specifically meant direct union and knowledge of God
through personal religious experiences. By the first half
of the 12th century, BERNARDof Clairvaux and William of
Saint-Thierry (d. 1148/49) saw the spiritual life as a
search based on love for union with God.WESTERN CHRISTIANITY
By the end of the 12th century, some clerics, and numer-
ous laymen and laywomen, claimed to have had mystical
experiences. These were prompted by intense meditation
on the sufferings of Christ and ascetic exercises promoting
detachment from earthly goods. These practices led to an
interiorization of religious feeling, an ardent desire for
God, and an intense devotion to the Eucharist. All this
promoted a loving fusion or mystical union with God.
Such mysticism was an individual experience, knowable
only through the voice of the person feeling and experi-
encing it. Since priestly intermediation was not necessary,
the church was suspicious of it and its practitioners. Cleri-
cal confessors tried to tame or control it. However, some
of those claiming it or promoting its practice, such as
Margaret PORETTE, were executed for heresy. In intellec-
tual terms, it was not compatible with the rationalist
efforts of SCHOLASTICISMto reconcile faith and reason.EASTERN ORTHODOX
Byzantine mysticism was rooted in the ideas of ORIGEN
and the experience of the early desert fathers and moth-
ers, hermits following the models of John the Baptist and