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Popular Iconography of the Passion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Grace Frank
Grace Frank*
Affiliation:
Bryn Mawr College
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Extract

The material available for picturing to us the performances of the popular religious plays of mediæval France is so meagre that any possible addition to it seems worth investigating. Some valuable plates, reproducing the miniatures that accompany the Passion plays of Arras and Valenciennes, have been published by G. Cohen in his Théâtre en France au moyen âge, I (Paris: Rieder, 1928). The same author had previously given us a comprehensive treatment of the whole subject, with a full bibliography and a few other plates, in his Histoire de la mise en scène dans le théâtre religieux (2nd ed., Paris: Champion, 1926). Many suggestive hypotheses regarding the possible contributions of the mediæval stage to the art of the middle ages have been advanced by Émile Mâle in the two beautifully illustrated volumes, L'Art religieux duxiiesiècle (3rd ed., Paris: Colin, 1928), chap. IV and L'Art religieux de la fin du moyen âge (3rd ed., Paris: Colin, 1925), chap. II. In both of these, various iconographical innovations are plausibly traced to the influence of the liturgical and vernacular plays. Except for the works just mentioned, however, we are largely left to descriptive material and conjecture for our ideas about the costuming, staging, and other conventions of the mediæval religious drama. This is the more to be regretted in view of M. Mâle's important conclusions, and it would therefore seem that any illustrations that may give us a conception of the popular iconography of the Passion in the middle ages possess a dual claim upon our attention.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , June 1931 , pp. 333 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1931

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References

page 335 note 1 Says Mâle, L'Art rel. de la fin du m. â., p. 81: Comme les Mystères se jouaient partout à peu près de la même manière, on ne s'étonne pas de voir partout aussi les artistes reproduire les mêmes costumes, les mêmes décors, les mêmes jeux de scène. Elsewhere, PMLA. xxxv (1920), 464, in an article on “The Development of the Passion Play,” I have tried to show that the interrelations between the plays and the numerous references to their performance both indicate that texts were freely borrowed and that great similarity existed between the plays being produced all over France at this time.

page 335 note 2 Hubert Cailleau, who painted the vignettes of the Passion de Valenciennes, was himself an actor in that play. Compare our Narrator (Plate I a) with the Prologueur of Arras (Cohen, Théâtre, Plate xxxi), our Entry into Jerusalem (ii a) with that of Valenciennes (Cohen, Plate xxix), or our representation of Hell (ix b) with the Arras and Valenciennes Hells (Cohen, Plates xx and xl).

page 336 note 3 The halo is green V a, gold VII a, purple IX b, white II a; it is red and orange I bcd, black and purple II b, IX, purple and green III c, center at table; green and black III c, left, etc. Of course, on the stage, such changes would not be introduced—some latitude must be permitted a miniaturist in using different colors to obtain a variety of effects on the page.

page 338 note 4 Cf. Mâle, L'Art rel. du xiie siècle, 294 f., C. Enlart, Manuel d'Archéologie française iii, 301 f. To the various works of M. Mâle, to the authorities cited by Enlart, to J. Quicherat's Histoire du Costume en France, J. P. Planché's A Cyclopædia of Costume and Londsdale and Tarver's Illustrations of Mediæval Costumes, I am indebted for more than one detail in the foregoing account.

page 339 note 5 Cf. Cohen, Histoire de la mise en scène, p. 89, and on “scaffolds hye,” J. J. Jusserand in An English Miscellany presented lo Dr. F. J. Furnivall (Oxford, 1901), p. 183.

page 339 note 6 Cf. Georges Duriez, La Théologie dans le drame religieux, (Lille: Giard, 1914), p. 417; Mâle, L'Art rel. de la fin du m. â., 19–21; E. Roy, Le Mystère de la Passion en France 91–3, 231.