Passion Plays

This paper challenges the narratives which seek to explain the origin of medieval Croatian Passion plays in ‘evolutionary’ terms. Most scholars holding those views rely on the positivist research of N. Kolumbić, who sought to prove the evolution by tracking down the same octosyllabic couplets in various genres of Passion literature. While nowadays some Croatian philologists interpret Kolumbić’s research as a proof of the indigenous origin of the genre, in this paper I demonstrate that his own theory is mostly trying to make a case for the indigenous and gradual development of the surviving texts in Croatian Passion corpus, which renders the aforementioned genre-related use of his argument misleading. Furthermore, I argue against Kolumbić’s argument which treats the episodic emergence of the same verses in texts which belong to various genres as signs of their shared ancestry. Considering the “variance” of medieval poetry in Croatian vernacular and simultaneous existence of multiple Passion genres, I suggest that many of the similarities tracked down by Kolumbić can be better explained as results of attempts to creatively recast the widespread topoi and set-pieces in various environments

This paper explains how the modern staging or re-enactment of Škofjeloški pasijon (the Škofja Loka passion play or, in Latin, Processio locopolitana) constructs a distinct controversies: (a) a amateurism/professionalism controversy; (b) a play/performance controversy; (c) a theatre/community controversy; (d) history/presence controversy; and (e) an epistemology/faith controversy. Around 1715, Father Romuald (1676–1748), a member of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, wrote a script for a passion play, the oldest preserved dramatic script written in the Slovenian language and the oldest preserved regie-book in Europe. The passion play was performed during Lent until 1768 in the form of penitential passion play procession. After Slovenia’s political system changed in 1991, interest in the passion play revived, but there have since been only a few performances in 1999, 2000, 2009 and 2015. The performance of the passion play is deeply affected by collective amateurism and construction of a distinct theatre passion play community. Even if the future productions of the Škofja Loka passion play will eventually developed to a higher professional level, the Škofja Loka passion play will always remain a communal theatre that demands a passion play theatre community with medieval roots in a modern secular society.

The Northern German Lüneburger Klöster (or Heideklöster) are six interconnected women’s convents that were Benedictine and Cistercian communities up to the Reformation and then were transformed into Protestant monasteries for the daughters of the regional nobility. Until today, they exist as religious communities, now open to women from all strata of society.
In the late 15th century, the general monastic reform in Northwestern Germany engendered a religious culture of great intensity and artistic diversity in the six convents, which is documented in a rich spectrum of architectonic, artistic, textile, liturgical, literary, and musical sources. The unique density and homogeneity of these sources give testimony of a monastic form of life that was entirely rooted in the Bible, the liturgy, and Christian faith and translated this fundament into various forms of artistic expression. – With Passion Tide and Easter, this collection of essays focuses on the central aspect in the Christian faith and the church year. As a time of deepest suffering and greatest joy, Passion and Easter have left numerous traces in the Lüneburg convents. Experts from the fields of monastic history, liturgy, late medieval literature, visual arts, textile arts, and musicology present central sources from the late 15th century and put them into the context of a late medieval monastic life that built entirely on the fundament of liturgy and the Bible. At the same time, the Lüneburg convents are presented as a cultural space that offered women special opportunities for a translation of religious beliefs into artistic expression.
The book presents the proceedings of an interdisciplinary conference organized by Linda Maria Koldau at Kloster Ebstorf in March 2009.

Shakespeare’s representation of Julius Caesar differs notably from those of his contemporaries, as well as from the picture of Caesar that emerges from his most obvious classical source, Plutarch’s Lives. Plutarch’s Caesar is shrewd, resilient, and relatively dignified; Shakespeare’s, in contrast, is physically weak and surprisingly obtuse, prey to laughable grandiosity. Other early modern authors such as Marc-Antoine Muret and William Alexander model their versions of Caesar on Seneca’s Hercules as well as Plutarch’s biography. Shakespeare, however, seems to draw inspiration for his departure from Plutarch from the conventional depiction of Julius Caesar’s successor Augustus, as well as other tyrants such as Herod the Great, in medieval English mystery plays. Over the course of these pageants depicting Christian salvation history, protagonists such as Moses and Isaac set up a typology of Christ. Meanwhile, however, secular antagonists such as the Pharaoh of Egypt establish a contrary pattern: a typology of Antichrist. Like Lucifer, as well as Antichrist himself, “Caesar” in the mystery plays is typecast as a blustering, comically inadequate parody of Godhead. Vaunting speeches proclaiming his supreme worldly might echo the language of God the Father. These boasts are then belied, however, by his inability to forestall the coming of Christ, whom he fears as a potential political rival. Mystery plays, naturally enough, tend to focus on Augustus Caesar, emperor of Rome at the time of Christ’s Nativity. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, however, stands in the same medieval tradition. As a type of Antichrist, he is a foil for the future Christ. His failure sets the stage for a different and paradoxically more powerful Messiah.

Thanking all those who have requested that I upload a copy, very sorry not to be able to oblige but copyright law forbids it.  That said, I think that enough time has elapsed--with enough reviewable work out there--that I'm happy to be able to upload the Introduction! Thanks again, all for your interest. Amazon.com or abebooks.com often have great deals on used copies.  JE

Why did medieval dramatists weave so many scenes of torture into their plays? Exploring the cultural connections among rhetoric, law, drama, literary creation, and violence, Jody Enders addresses an issue that has long troubled students of the Middle Ages. Theories of rhetoric and law of the time reveal, she points out, that the ideology of torture was a widely accepted means for exploiting such essential elements of the stage and stagecraft as dramatic verisimilitude, pity, fear, and catharsis to fabricate truth. Analyzing the consequences of torture for the history of aesthetics in general and of drama in particular, Enders shows that if the violence embedded in the history of rhetoric is acknowledged, we are better able to understand not only the enduring "theater of cruelty" identified by theorists from Isidore of Seville to Antonin Artaud, but also the continuing modern devotion to the spectacle of pain.

George Cram Cook, a multi-faceted personality and from its inception in 1915 the brain behind the famous Provincetown Players (a theatre in which Eugene O’Neill, among others, started his career), came to Greece in 1922 and settled in Delphi with his wife and renowned author Susan Glaspell. There Cook met Angelos and Eva Sikelianos; before the beginning of their Delphi Festivals he ventured to stage a type of Passion play at the ancient theatre at Delphi, but he passed away in 1924. This article examines Cook’s acquaintance with the Sikelianos couple and other intellectuals as well. It also examines the kind of theatre that he had attempted to create in Greece and the influence he had possibly exerted on Eva Palmer-Sikelianos. Concerning the latter, it is suggested that the impact of Cook’s views generally was rather limited, even though his effort in Delphi prompted Angelos Sikelianos to accelerate the creation of the Delphi Festivals. It is also suggested that Palmer-Sikelianos’ very interesting views concerning various issues were mainly owed to the Duncans as well as to the more widely popular ideas of the avant-garde movement of her times.

Staged annually at the Amelia Lapena-Bonifacio Papet Teatro-Museo, Papet Pasyon is the only sinakulo in the Philippines performed in puppetry to date. In this essay, the puppet play is proposed to be an entanglement of three cultural forms: the literary form of the pasyon, the theatre form of the sinakulo, and the art of puppetry. The bases for the text of this puppet play are foreign sources namely a children’s Bible from Europe, the passion play from Oberammergau in Germany, and the dramatic tradition of the Western musical. Though originally a Western-based text, Lapena-Bonifacio crafted and encapsulated the puppet play into an hour and a half show that highlights the story of Christ’s passion, is written in a Philippine language, and is understandable to young audiences. Its manner of presentation, on the other hand, was inspired by the very rich puppet traditions of Asia, particularly the Japanese bunraku and the Indonesian wayang golek. The essay begins exploring this proposal...

This interview with a historian of Christianity concentrates on the topic of Jesus Christ's Passion in film history. The development from passion play to Jesus-Film includes great directors like Cecil B. DeMille and Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Please cite vol. 16, no. 4, April 2022, pp. 26-30.

In 'Passie voor de passie' laat Ernst van den Hemel zien hoe De Matthäus en The Passion nieuwe betekenis krijgen in een ontkerkelijkt Nederland.



Elk jaar beleven miljoenen Nederlanders een opvoering van het lijdensverhaal van Christus. Of het nu gaat om de Matthäus-Passion, The Passion of een van de vele andere passiespelen, in Nederland is er sprake van een opvallende populariteit van het verhaal van Christus' kruisiging. Wat betekent deze passie voor de passie?


Vaak wordt gewezen op het genie van Bach of de kracht van het bijbelverhaal. Maar is dat ook wat mensen beleven? Wat voelt, bijvoorbeeld, een babyboomer met religie-allergie bij het zingen van het 'Erbarme Dich' in de meezing-Matthäus? En wat betekent het grote, lichtgevende kruis dat tijdens The Passion voor de ogen van ruim drie miljoen tv-kijkers door de straten van een stad gedragen wordt?

The essay examines how medieval play spectatorship crossed the thresholds between private and public devotion in four main areas: 1) the claiming of public space for private devotion; 2) the acceptance of standing and other alternative body positions for viewing the passion; 3) the rehearsal of an affective response to depictions of Christ’s suffering; and 4) the literal reimagining of stage action in the post-performance reading of play manuscripts.

Cast of characters in speaking truth to power: key role of women?
Tricoteuses -- relishing the repression of truth?
Fake news -- "let them eat cake"?
Show trials, mock trials and regicides in a period of farce?
Passion for truth as highlighted by a play
Ambiguities regarding the justice of a trial
Kangaroo court -- for the trial of an Australian?
Paradox of folk heroism?
Secretive security services constraining Assange?
Appropriate symbolic alternative to crucifixion for Assange?

This study explores the scripted-ness of Christian antisemitism, as presented in Elie Wiesel’s The Gates of the Forest. The main entry point into this study’s analysis of antisemitic Christian scripts is the novel’s presentation of the Passion play. But before examining the Passion play proper, this study investigates how the novel describes the Rumanian villagers as “characters” and Gregor as one who is wearing a “mask.” Such theatrical diction points to how the villagers perform in their day-to-day lives and to how Gregor, in order to save his life, must also act according to the antisemitic Christian script that the villagers follow. As the novel progresses, and as Gregor finds himself on-stage, the villagers’ familiarity with the Passion narrative becomes more pronounced, and it can be seen how their familiarity with the story of Jesus’ Passion undergirds their hatred for Jews in the everyday. Indeed, the text reveals how the villagers become more affectively attached to the narrative of Jewish betrayal the more they hear, read, and/or watch such stories; as individuals repeatedly internalize such scripts throughout their lives, such scripts become taken for granted as “natural” or “the way things are.” And when scripts are naturalized—especially when they find their genesis in Christian scripture—challenges to the violence they incite are disregarded, since these scripts are perceived as “Gospel truth.” It can therefore be seen how the village’s performance of the Passion play (an antisemitic script in and of itself) functions as a metaphorization of the enduring performance of antisemitic scripts that we see in the workaday world before the play’s production. Through its exploration of antisemitic Christian scripts during the time of the Holocaust, The Gates of the Forest thus demonstrates not only how the Shoah constitutes the backdrop of the Passion narrative in the story. But the novel also presents how the Passion narrative indeed functions as the backdrop of the Holocaust, that which ultimately, insidiously, set the stage for the mass murder of millions of Jews.

Francis of Meyronnes (1288 – 1328) was a theologian and a sermonist, disciple of John Duns Scoto. He wrote an impressive number of philosophical, political and devotional works. He studied at the University of Paris and taught in several provincial studia in France and in Italy.

The authors of the Late Middle Ages had two main ways to tell the Passion: in form of “meditations” or in form of “narrative representations”. Meyronnes’ Tractatus de Passione Domini belongs to this second typology, which allows the author to invent dialogues or to describe characters’ emotions and thoughts and to offer sometimes also his own point of view to the reader. Moreover, his work is probably the first example of this textual typology.

Communication donnée lors de la journée d’étude « Savoirs du théâtre. Histoire d’un dispositif » organisée par Frédérique Aït-Touati et Alexeï Evstratov le 23 juin 2017 à l’EHESS.
Résumé : À une époque qui assiste à l’émergence de l’État moderne, Corneille (1606-1684), en tant que producteur d’un ensemble de règles pour l’écriture dramatique dans les préfaces et examens de ses pièces, s’intéressa de près à l’artefact scénique, dont il fit un instrument d’exploration de l’âme d’artifice de ses personnages. Racine (1639-1699) lui succéda au premier rang des poètes dramatiques, grâce à une poétique du naturel qui jeta sur les scènes des âmes prises au piège de leur destin et de leurs affects. Les passions de l’âme sont ainsi au coeur de la dramaturgie classique en France, qui construisit la scène comme un dispositif cognitif d’élaboration des affects, dispositif socialement et historiquement situé dans la perspective d’une renégociation philosophique de l’État et du sujet politique.
I. Un instrument d'exploration de l'âme : la scène comme dispositif cognitif chez Corneille
II. Une mise en scène critique du sujet politique : poétique du sujet dans Esther et Athalie de Racine

La mise en marché des « Passions filmées » semble avoir représenté un véritable défi pour les différents éditeurs de vues, dans la mesure où chacun de ces films raconte, à peu de chose près, la même « histoire ». Comment, en effet, un éditeur de vues peut-il convaincre un exploitant de salle d’acheter une copie de sa Passion filmée plutôt que celle du concurrent? Pis encore, comment convaincre l’exploitant de salle d’acheter la toute nouvelle Passion filmée, plutôt que de projeter, encore et encore, la version qu’il s’était procurée quelques années auparavant? Par ailleurs, comment l’éditeur de vues peut-il renouveler la mise en film d’une histoire mille fois racontée? Ce sont de telles questions qui seront abordées ici, dans un texte qui propose une réflexion sur les stratégies auxquelles ont pu donner lieu divers projets de « filmer Jésus » au tournant du dix-neuvième siècle. Y sont notamment abordées différentes procédures de mise en film ayant été adoptées par la maison Pathé (dont une pratique de recyclage tout à fait inédite et probablement unique) en vue de l’élargissement de son public, et où il sera démontré que Pathé s’est efforcé de faire du neuf avec du vieux…

This paper attempts to place Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ’ in a more objective context, by focusing on establishing the real significance of Gibson’s film in the light of Christianity’s theological import and its possible interpretation(s) for a contemporary Western world.  In this regard, the film is evaluated from a number of interrelated perspectives, viz.: Gibson’s avowed intentions, historical accuracy, written gospel accuracy, Catholic sectarian accuracy, contemporary Catholic accuracy and most importantly, the phenomenon of the film itself.

The author concludes that Gibson, who clearly views his faith through the mediation of often violent film imagery, rather than serious theological insights, has pandered to the needs of a cinema-going public that is largely incapable of responding to subtlety because it has become visually punch-drunk by so much celluloid brutality and technological special effects. As a result, this film undermines its own purpose of conversion to Christianity due to its message of hate, violence and bigotry.  In addition, it has the potential to undermine any reconciliation between Jewish and Christian groups.

The Colosseum had an ambivalent status in early-modern Christian Rome: on one hand the most remarkable remnant of ancient grandeur, the foremost landmark of the city and the obvious architectural model to imitate and emulate; on the other hand the stage for the most brutal persecution and execution of early Christian martyrs. This paper shows how the ambivalence made the ancient monument a most striking and productive stage for religious ceremonial in early modernity; how the emotional intensity of the religious performance was heightened by the sublime ruin and the gory narratives that it evoked; and how the Colosseum in its turn was transformed, physically as well as conceptually, by the performances.

Članak je kritički osvrt na tekuće istraživanje Ivana Missonija koji nastoji protumačiti idejno i osjećajno višeglasje hrvatskih pasionskih prikazanja pomoću Rousselotove distinkcije između »fizičke« i »ekstatičke ljubavi«.

In this paper I analyze a recent interpretation of the medieval Croatian Passion plays put forward by Ivan Missoni in which the inner workings of the genre are understood as the interplay between the »physical« and »ecstatic love«. However, the differences in the emotional and ideological content of Christ's and Mary's utterances are not necessarily best understood as the tension between the notions of love inferred by Pierre Rousselot from the material produced by medieval intellectuals (Pour l’historie du problème de l’amour au Moyen Age, 1908). Namely, medieval Croatian Passion plays are a popular genre, and the polyphony of ideas might actually reflect the tension between (i) the basic understanding of the theological meaning of Christ's sacrifice and (ii) local folk psychologies and norms regulating mourning practices in communities that used to perform these texts (cf. Dronke, Goodland). While Missoni’s decision to rely on Rousselot is never fully explained, the possibility of other sound interpretations of the same phenomena at the very least indicates that the author’s choice of interpretative framework is arbitrary. In addition to the problems stemming from the arbitrariness of the interpretative framework, Missoni’s paper contains a number of faulty generalizations about the content of the sources and it hasn’t been entirely successful in describing the distribution of various ideological and emotional perspectives in lamentations of Mary and Passion plays. While Missoni’s proposal to study the polyphony of ideas in medieval Croatian Passion plays and Mary’s lamentations shows a great appreciation for the complexity of the genre, considerable methodological refinements and a more meticulous reading of the sources are needed if his research is to yield reliable results.

This paper was given at the 5e Colloque Annuel Arts et Médias, "L’image consumée: excès, limites et transformations," 16-17 November at l’Université de Montréal, Canada. Below is the proposal.

The Holy Land Experience (HLE), a blockbuster theme park and house of worship that opened in 2001 in Orlando, Florida, is an artificial first-century Jerusalem featuring daily musicals of the life of Christ. HLE is easy to dismiss, not least as the next logical step in the kitschy progression of American consumerism—but we ought to resist that temptation. The aesthetic vacuity that renders it so intellectually unappealing for art historians is exactly what makes it paradigmatic of the phenomenon that created it: around 300 Holy Land reproductions currently exist in the United States. They are culturally embedded in the built environment of Protestant worship, yet receive little scholarly attention. This paper examines this architectural genre, heretofore undiscussed collectively, via exempla of its main typologies: 19th-century topographic models, 20th-century biblical theme parks and permanent open-air Passion play stages, and today’s fusions of all three.

For centuries, Americans have created and consumed these idealized Holy Lands through ritual engagement with them, establishing a tradition I call “performing Jerusalem.” In tracing the development of this phenomenon, two trends emerge. First, the medium through which “Jerusalem” is consumed becomes increasingly theatrical, and thus viewers’ experiences become increasingly mediated. Second, these Jerusalems create an essentially immersive educational model, presenting eschatological pedagogy as historical recreation. They all claim the unqualified authenticity of their imitation; and this truth-claim, which defines the imitation’s formal qualities, intentionally renders their content fundamentally didactic.

The earliest imitations derive their authenticity materially, from the scientific accuracy of the reconstruction. Later reproductions, however, gradually lose this direct visual correspondence with their referent. While they retain the aesthetic language of “history” and “science,” they eschew the original compositions they claim to replicate. Instead, they base their forms on evangelical ideology, illustrating a ‘religious truth’ that is derived only exegetically and culturally. Thus, there is an epistemological shift from Jerusalem re-constructed by empirical methods, to Jerusalem re-created by normative ones.

Emplacing Jerusalem onto American soil engages the local topography, so I trace the role of the indigenous landscape as these reproductions’ unifying architectural medium, examining both how these Jerusalems literally construct biblical history for popular consumption, and the subsequent slippage between historicity and veracity that has accrued ever greater margins of error. In this charged time of “alternative facts,” this gap between archaeological reality and constructed fiction has more dangerous social implications than just “getting it wrong” in the academic sense.

This essay explores the interventions of the exegetical proclamator and related figures in late-medieval theatric representations of Christ’s passion. The „proclaimer“ directed audience attention both towards and away from the physical presence of the Christ figure on stage, thereby regulating spectators’ experience of the Eucharistic body. The Lucerne and Frankfurt passion play traditions exhibit opposing trends in this regulation of presence. In the Lucerne Passion Play of 1583, exegetical figures apostrophize the audience following scenes of Christ’s torture, verbally invoking the violence witnessed and shaping it for later devotional memory. In contrast, the "proclamator" of the Frankfurt Passion Play (1493), here in the guise of Augustine, recedes from the stage during the play’s violent depiction of the passion. The audience is left with an unmediated experience of the staged crucifixion, which, lacking devotional channelling, likely incited anti-Semitic sentiment.

Im späten Mittelalter war Frankfurt nicht nur eine bedeutende Messestadt, sondern auch ein Schauplatz für Passionsaufführungen. Nach den Spuren dieser Spieltradition in der modernen Stadt zu suchen, eine wichtige Facette des literarischen Lebens zu erforschen und einer breiteren Öffentlichkeit zu vermitteln, war das Ziel eines Lehrprojekts, das von Dr. Stephanie Dreyfürst und PD Dr. Regina Toepfer von April 2012 bis April 2014 an der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt durchgeführt wurde. Gemeinsam mit Studierenden der Literatur- und Geschichtswissenschaft entwickelten die Projektleiterinnen einen historischen Stadtrundgang zum Herunterladen. Die App ‚Frankfurt im Mittelalter‘ führt zu Kunstdenkmälern und historischen Stätten, die noch heute von der spätmittelalterlichen Passionsfrömmigkeit zeugen