Notes on the Religious Drama in Medival Spain and the Origins of the "Auto Sacramental"

Author(s): Alexander A. Parker

Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Apr., 1935), pp. 170-182
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association
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NOTES ON THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA IN MEDIAEVAL
SPAIN AND THE ORIGINS OF THE
'AUTO SACRAMENTAL'
THE
history
of the drama in mediaeval
Spain
has never been
adequately
studied. This is
chiefly
due to the
paucity
of
texts,
notices and documents.
Spain
has indeed been unfortunate in the loss of her earliest
literary
works,
and it is in the
drama,
both
religious
and
secular,
that this loss is
perhaps
most
seriously
felt. The
subject
is
important enough
to
justify
an
attempt
to
remedy
this
deficiency
in view of the
unique development
of the
Miracles and Moralities into the Auto Sacramental and the
perfection
given
to this
type
of drama
by
Calderon. The scantiness of the material
upon
which to work
precludes
for the time
being
a
complete
and final
study
of this
question.
Nevertheless,
insufficient attention has been
paid
to those documents whose
discovery
has rewarded
painstaking
search,
and their full
significance
has been missed. The whole
question
of the
origin
and
early history
of the Auto Sacramental is still
unnecessarily
obscure,
and it is with the intention of
throwing
some
light
on this that
I have endeavoured in this article to summarise most of the
existing
and
little-known evidence as to the medieval church drama in
Spain.
The first fact that strikes us is the tardiness of the
development
of the
religious
drama when
compared
with that of other countries. This is
easily
understandable in view of the
peculiar position
of
Spain
in mediaeval
Europe.
But,
though Spain developed
much later than France or
Eng-
land,
she followed the same lines. The
liturgical
drama, i.e.,
plays per-
formed in the churches at Christmas and Easter as
part
of the Divine
Office,
arose in the same
way.
Two Easter
tropes
from Silos
showing
the
earliest and normal
European
form
prove
this to have been the case.1
But there is no
connecting
link between this and the
fragment
of the
vernacular
liturgical play,
the Misterio de los
Reyes Magos,
a
fairly
ad-
vanced version of the Stella theme which seems to date from the middle
of the twelfth
century.
Even if these few lines had not
survived,
the
existence of the Christmas and Easter
plays
in
Spain
would have been
proved
from the
often-quoted passage
in the
thirteenth-century
Code of
Law,
the Siete
Partidas,
which also
proves
that the
gaya scienqia,
cultivated
with enthusiasm in
Spain by king,
courtier and
professional singer
alike,
1
C.
Lange,
Die lateinischen
Osterfeiern (Munich, 1887), pp.
24-5.
ALEXANDER A. PARKER
had the same effect on the
liturgical
drama as it had in France. This
minstrel and folk
spirit
had
triumphed
to such an extent that not
only
had it
produced
a secular and
popular
drama,
juegos
de
escarnio,
but it
had
pushed
its
way
into the
very
churches and become a
grave
cause of
scandal. Clerics are forbidden to sanction the
performance
of such
plays
in churches or to have
any part
whatever in their
production.
But,
the
law
continues,
there are
plays
which clerics
may produce;
these are the
Nativity
of
Christ,
in which the
Angel appears
to the
Shepherds,
the visit
of the
Magi,
and the Resurrection. These
plays
should be acted with
respect
and
devotion,
and
only
in the
larger
cities where the
bishops
can
superintend
their
production. They
should not be
performed
in
villages
nor for financial
profit.
This reveals the existence and
popularity
of the two main
groups
of
liturgical plays,
but it also reveals how the civil authorities assisted the
Church in her endeavour to check all abuses. This was as severe an ad-
ministrative
problem
in
Spain
as in
France,
and the abuses
proved
as
difficult to eradicate.1 The Feast of
Fools,
the
Boy Bishop, Obispillo,
and
the sword dance known as the
Degollacion,
were all difficult to
suppress.
Notices of the
Boy Bishop
in
Spanish
cathedrals can still be found in the
sixteenth
century.
In Lerida and Gerona this
popular ceremony,
there
called the
Bisbato,
was not
finally
abolished until the end of that
century.2
The Council of Toledo of 1324
vainly attempted
to forbid all
dancing
in
churches. That of Aranda in 1473
prohibited
all
larvas, ludos, monstra,
spectacula, figmenta
et
tumultuationes,
but hastened to add:
per
hoc tam
honestas
repraesentationes
et
devotas,
quae populum
ad devotionem
movent,
tam in
praefatis
diebus
quam
in aliis non intendimus
prohibere.3
This
pantomimic spirit,
later cloaked in
baroque symbolism,
continued in the
tarasca wheeled in the
procession
before the
performance
of the Autos
Sacramentales,
and can still be
recognised to-day
in the
grotesque figures
carried round in
Spanish Holy-Week processions.
The evolution of the
liturgical
drama into the Miracle
plays,
i.e.,
re-
ligious plays dealing
with Old and New Testament
subjects
and the lives
of the
Saints,
performed publicly
in the
open by
the
Guilds,
occurred in
Europe
in the thirteenth
century.
But it is not until the fourteenth
1
As
early
as 589 the famous third Council of
Toledo,
in the
presence
of
King
Reccared
and St Leander,
had
prohibited
all
pantomimic
behaviour in the churches. Cf. Cardinal
J. S.
Aguirre,
CoUectio Maxima Conciliorum Omnium
Hispaniae
et Novi Orbis
(Rome,
1693), I, p.
348.
2
M. Mil
y Fontanals, 'Origenes
del Teatro
Catalan',
in Obras
Completas (Barcelona,
1895), vI, pp.
213-14.
8
Mansi,
Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et
Amplissima
Collectio
(Paris, 1902), xxxn,
col. 397.
171
172 Notes on the
Religious
Drama in Mediaeval
Spain
century
that we find
any
notice of this transition in
Spain,
and it is not
until the
following century
that we can
definitely point
to
any fully
developed
Miracle
plays.
It is in Catalonia that documents
bearing
on
this are most numerous. It was the institution of the feast of
Corpus
Christi with its outdoor
procession
that first
brought
these church dramas
into the
open.
The consueta of Gerona
Cathedral,
dated
1360, which,
to the
best of
my knowledge,
has not
yet
been
printed
in
full,
apparently gives
some account of these new dramatic
performances.
It is there recordedl
that the feast of
Corpus
Christi
(probably
introduced into Gerona
by
Berenguer
de
Palaciolo,
who died in
1314)
was celebrated
by
a
procession
through
the streets in which
giant figures
were borne
along,
and in which
the
benleficiaries
of the cathedral
'performed plays'
in the
public squares.
The
plays
were the
Sacrifice of
Isaac,
the Dream and
Selling of
Joseph,
and
'other sacred
subjects'.
Freiherr von Schack took it for
granted
that
these were
plays,
and this has never been
questioned.
It
is, however,
extremely unlikely
that these
repraesentationes
were at this date
anything
more than
processional
tableaux or
pageants,
in view of the fact that it
was not until a
very
much later date that similar tableaux were trans-
formed into
plays
at Valencia and Barcelona. It is
impossible
to believe
that Gerona could have been some
sixty
or
seventy years
in advance of
these other much more
important
cities.2
The continued
popularity
and
development
of the
liturgical
drama and
its survival well into the sixteenth
century
would also make it
unlikely
that Miracle
plays
were
really
established
by
1360. But the
liturgical
drama tended to widen its
scope
in the direction of the Miracle
plays,
and
became connected with feasts other than Christmas and Easter. The
Prophetae
was
always popular,
and the recitation of the
Sibyl
survived
in several churches in Catalonia for
many years.3
In Gerona a
liturgical
play treating
of St
Stephen's martyrdom
was
regularly performed
in the
sanctuary
when the Saint's
memory
was read at the second
vespers
of
Christmas.4 And in 1473 it was decided that
plays
should be acted
every
Sunday
unless the feast of St Thomas
Aquinas
should fall on a
Sunday;
nevertheless,
on one occasion when this did
happen
a
play
of the
Tempta-
tion of Christ was
produced
in the afternoon. A
year
later the
Chapter
1
See the account of the consueta
given by
Fr. Jos6 de la Canal in Espana
Sagrada
(Madrid, 1832), XLV, pp. 15ff.,
especially p.
24.
2
The
original
text of the document would
help
to throw some
light
on this
question.
Fr. Jose de la Canal
merely
states that los
beneficiados
de la catedral
representaban
el
sacrificio
de
Isaac,
etc. He would not have realised that the word
repraesentatio (probably
used
here),
as well as its vernacular
equivalent,
did not
necessarily imply any
dramatic action.
a
Milh
y
Fontanals,
op. cit.,
pp.
294-311.
4
Recorded in a document of
1380,
Espana
Sagrada, XLV, p. 17.
ALEXANDER A. PARKER
agreed
to
preserve
the
customary
Resurrection
play performed
at matins
on Easter
morning
which some members
suggested
should be abolished.1
The abolition of this Easter
play
was
again
the
subject
of discussion
by
the
Chapter
in 1534. An acta
capitular
of that
year
records the decision
of the
Chapter
to continue the annual
performance
of this traditional
play, quae vulgo
dicitur les tres
Maries,
and the rules
they
laid down for its
production
in a more
edifying
manner. 2 The
play
seems to have been a
rather late version of the
Quem
quaeritis type,
to which had been added
various scenes
representing
the
episode
of the Centurion-this must have
been
part
of a Passion
play-the apparition
of Christ to St
Mary Magda-
len,
and the
incredulity
of St Thomas. But these additional scenes had
given
rise to abuses of some sort which were considered detrimental to
the devotional
spirit
of the
original play,
and the
Chapter
decided to
forbid them. In this
way
the
liturgical
drama
expanded
towards the
more extensive
range
of the
Miracles,
but was reduced to its former
simplicity by reformatory
measures. These same
reformatory
measures,
in
conformity
with the
process
of centralisation then
coming
to a
head,
gradually
unified and
stereotyped
the
liturgy
in all
Spanish
churches. The
liturgical plays
then
finally disappeared,
and the
Corpus
Christi
autos,
by
that time
completely
secularised,
alone survived. But as late as 1581
a
Nativity play
was still
being performed
in the cathedral at Huesca.3
Liturgical plays
were
popular
in Valencia Cathedral. These
required
some form of
scenery
and mechanical devices. On the Feast of
Pentecost,
for
instance,
a dove descended from the roof in the midst of
bursting
fire-
works intended to
represent
the
tongues
of fire. This
celebration,
known
as la
Colometa,
was also
popular
at Lerida. It was forbidden at Valencia
by Bishop
Vidal de Blanes
(1356-9),
but it was soon revived. In 1469 the
High
Altar
caught
fire;
it was then
definitely prohibited.
An
attempt
was
made to abolish it at Lerida in
1518,
but so
great
was the
popular outcry
that it had to be restored.4
There were also
pageants
in the cathedral at Valencia in which the
clerks
represented
various New Testament
figures,
and
during
the
Christmas matins a statue
portraying
the
Virgin
and Child was let down
from the roof. In 1440 Eve is mentioned as one of the characters in the
Christmas
play,
and in 1531 some form of the
Prophetae
was still
being
Mila
y Fontanals, op. cit.,
p.
210.
2
This
interesting
document is too
lengthy
to
reproduce
here. It can be read in
Espaia
Sagrada, XLV,
pp.
23-4.
3
R. del
Arco, 'Misterios,
Autos Sacramentales
y
otras fiestas en la Catedral de
Huesca',
in Revista de
Archivos, Bibliotecas
y
Museos
(1920),
xu, p.
263. See also Mila
y Fontanals,
op.
cit.,
p.
217 n.
4
Mila
y
Fontanals,
op. cit.,
pp.
212-13.
173
174 Notes on the
Religious
Drama in Mediceval
Spain
acted. In 1520
scenery
was installed in the choir in which the walls and
towers of Bethlehem were
painted.1
Three
plays
written for the Feast
of the
Assumption
reveal this
gradual
transition from the
simple
litur-
gical play
to the more
developed
Miracle while still intended for
perform-
ance in church. The best of these is the
fragment
described
by
Merimee,2
which dates
perhaps
from the end of the fourteenth
century
and which
may
have been
performed annually
at Valencia. The Catalan
Repre-
sentacio de la
asumpcio
de madona Santa
Maria,
of unknown
origin,
is also
of the late fourteenth
century.3
The third of these is the well-known
Misterio de Elche which is still
performed
at the
present day.
As it now
stands the text is of the first half of the sixteenth
century,
but the
play
must have
originated
at least a
century
earlier.4 These late
liturgical
plays
were therefore no
monopoly
of the
larger
cities,
and the smaller the
town or
village
the more
jealously
would it
guard
its own
particular play.
Elche is not the
only
town that has
preserved
the tradition. At
Vallibona,
for
instance,
in the
province
of
Castell6n,
a short
rendering
of the Sacrifice
of Isaac still survives as
part
of the
Corpus
Christi
procession,
and some
villages
in the north of the same
province
still
perform
on the feast of
St
Anthony
the Abbot a
play
in his honour. The oldest of the various
versions is
apparently
the one
performed
at Cinctorres.5 In Mallorca
these
liturgical plays
seem to have reached their
highest development
round the
year
1420 when the accounts of Palma Cathedral show the
greatest expenditure
for this
purpose.
The
plays performed
were known
as
consuetas, cobles, auctos,
obras and
representacions.
Some of these have
survived in a late
sixteenth-century
MS. collection.
They approximate
to the Miracles
by presenting
an
unusually
wide
variety
of
subjects
from
the Old and New Testaments and the lives of the Saints. Those which
dramatise these latter themes are
apparently
later than
1450,
and others
are of still later date.
Some, however,
give
evidence of
greater antiquity.
In 1594 their
performance
was
prohibited by
the
Bishop
of
Mallorca,
but
they very likely
survived this destructive
attempt
as the tradition has
not been
entirely
lost.6 Two
fragments
of a
liturgical play dramatising
the conversion of
Mary Magdalen
were discovered
among papers
taken
1
H.
Merimee,
L'Art
Dramatique
d Valencia
(Toulouse, 1913), pp.
6ff.
2
Ibid., pp.
45ff.
3
This was the first
play published by
Juan
Pie,
'Autos
Sagramentals
del
sigle XIV',
in
the Revista de la Asociacion
Artistico-Arqueol6gica
Barcelonesa, July-October,
1898.
4
See Mila
y
Fontanals, pp.
218-21. The text is
reproduced
on
pp.
341-7. An account
of it
by
C. Vidal
y
Valenciano is also
reprinted
here as
Appendix
ii,
pp.
324-40. Cf.
F.
Pedrell,
La Festa
d'Elche,
ou le drame
liturgique espagnol,
1906.
5
E. Julia
Martinez, 'Representaciones
teatrales de caracter
popular
en la
provincia
de
Castellbn',
in the Boletin de la Real Academia
Espaiola (1930), xvII, pp.
99-105.
6
G.
Llabres, 'Repertorio
de Consuetas
representadas
en las
iglesias
de
Mallorca, siglos
XV
y
XVI',
in the Revista de
Archivos,
Bibliotecas
y
Museos
(1901),
v,
pp.
920-7.
ALEXANDER A. PARKER
from a Mallorcan convent. The MS. is said to date from the fourteenth
century,
and the
play,
which is in the
vernacular,
appears
to be
quite
an
original
work.1
The
Corpus
Christi
procession eventually brought
the
liturgical
drama
out into the
open,
and the civic character of the
procession
(in
Valencia
the
Bishop
transferred its
organisation
to the
municipal
authorities in
1372)
also freed it from the control of the
clergy,
and
by making
it a
people's
drama
paved
the
way
for the future Auto Sacramental. Never-
theless,
the
development
was
extremely
slow. In
England
the full
cycle
of Miracle
plays
was
complete by
the fourteenth
century.
In the same
century
in
Spain
there were still no
plays
but
only'pageants'.
There were
two different lines of
development,
one Catalonian and
Valencian,
the
other Castilian and Andalusian. The former
process
of
development
can
be seen most
clearly
in Valencia.2 The
procession
was
inaugurated
in that
city
in 1355. It was
composed
of a series of
pageants
on carts drawn
through
the streets. These carts were called
entramesos,
later
roques,
and
are first found mentioned in 1373. A document of 1400 refers to
scenery
on the carts and to musicians. The carts formed a series of
tableaux,
representing, among
other
things,
St
George
and the
Dragon,
Jacob's
Ladder,
St Peter's
Keys
and Noah's Ark. At first and for
many years
the
figures
were
statues,
except
that at times men were
disguised
as lions and
other animals. It is not until 1400 and 1404 that we find these statues
being replaced by
men,
who then
sang
some lines written for them.
Rudimentary
dramatic action was introduced in
1414,
and
by
1425 a few
of these tableaux had at last become
plays
of some sort.
The words entrames and
representacio
used of these
spectacles
has led
many
writers to
presume
that
they
were
plays
from the first. The actual
development
of the tableaux into
plays
can be seen in the three Valencian
Miracles that have survived.3
They
are called entramesos de
peu
or
misteris. The Paradis
terrenal,
the
customary
treatment of the
Fall,
is the
development
of the
original
tableau
representing
Adam and Eve. In
1404 there is mention of tornar Adan e
Eva,
which reveals that
they
were
then no more than
figures.
Three
years
later the characters were
repre-
sented
by
a man and a woman.
By
1435 it is entitled l'entrames del
Paradis
terrenal,
but it could
only
have
presented
action and
dialogue
1
The
fragments together
with a short
study
were
published by
J. M.
Quadrado,
who
discovered
them,
in the Palma review La Unidad Cat6lica
(1871).
This article was
reprinted
as
Appendix
I to Mila
y Fontanals, op. cit.,
pp.
313-23.
2
Merimee, op. cit., pp.
9ff.
3
Merimee, op. cit.,
pp.
25ff.;
Mila
y
Fontanals, op. cit.,
pp.
222-8. See also this latter
work,
pp.
231, 348-9,
for two other Catalan
fifteenth-century plays, dealing
with miracles
worked
by
St Vincent
Ferrer,
which survived
through
oral tradition and were
printed
in the
eighteenth century.
175
176 Notes on the
Religious
Drama in Mediceval
Spain
of the most
primitive
kind,
for it is not until 1517 that the list of actors
corresponds
to the text as we now know it. Its
development
did not cease
there:
by
1587 it had been
considerably enlarged,
and in 1654 it was still
a roca. The 'St
Christopher'
is first referred to as one of the
roques
in
1451. There is no reason to think that it was then
anything
more than a
statue of the Saint with the child Jesus. In 1527 the account books
record a
salary paid
to a man for
representing
the
Saint,
but there is no
mention of
any
other characters with whom he could have carried on a
dialogue.
In 1531 it is referred to as l'entrames de
peu
de Sent
Chripstofol,
and it would then have been a
very simple play.
It is not until 1553 that
among
the list of the misteris we find the
Cristofol
ab sos
pelegrins.
The
appearance
of the
pilgrims
for the first time
gives
us the full
play
as we
now know it. It continued to
expand:
in 1587 salaries were
paid
to more
than
twenty
actors who took
part
in it. The third
play,
the Misteri de la
Degolla,
is
composed
of three
separate episodes:
the adoration of the
Magi,
the
flight
into
Egypt
and the massacre of the Innocents. These had
been three
separate
tableaux. The
Magi
are first referred to as a tableau
in
1408;
in 1432
Angels
were added who
sang
some
verse;
in 1517
dialogue
was introduced. The
flight
into
Egypt appears
as a tableau in
1451;
it is
not called a misteri until
1547,
and
only
in 1587 has it the full number of
actors
required by
the text as known to us. The Innocents formed a
tableau earlier than
1404;
by
1408
they
had ceased to be
statues,
but
Herod does not
appear
as a character until 1547 when the
play
is called
a misteri et
representaci6,
and
by
that date it had been united with the
misteri of the
Magi.
It must have been after 1587 that the
trilogy
was
completed
as in the extant text. It is
evident, therefore,
that real
Miracle
plays only
came into
being
in Valencia between 1500 and 1550.
What is true of Valencia must be true also of Barcelona.
Though
the
Corpus
Christi
procession
was
inaugurated
there as
early
as
1322,
repre-
sentacions and entramesos are first mentioned in 1394. The whole
organi-
sation was on a much more lavish scale and the order of the
procession1
shows that the
pageants
far outnumbered those of Valencia. As there
were in all 108 different
representacions
the
procession
must have been
a
magnificent
spectacle.
The
subjects
of the tableaux were
arranged
in
historical order and formed one
huge cycle
that
practically
exhausted
all the
outstanding
Old and New Testament scenes and
characters,
as
well as the lives of all the local Saints. But how
many
of these
eventually
became
plays
is not known. A
municipal
document dated
April
20, 1453,
gives
detailed instructions for the construction and
arrangement
of some
1
Mila
y Fontanals, op. cit.,
Appendix vu, pp.
374-9.
ALEXANDER A. PARKER
of the
entramesos,
revealing
considerable
ingenuity
and artistic
sense,
but
it is evident from this document that none of these
pageants
can be called
plays, though
some of the characters
sang.
The entrames
appellat
Bellem
reveals, however,
the first
step
towards dramatic action
consisting
in the
movement of
characters,
but there still seems to be no
dialogue:
E en
laltre
porxo
de
part
dreta stara la Maria
ajonollada,
e en lo
mig
de la
diffa-
rencia dels dits dos
porxos
stara lo
infant
Jesus tot nuu lensant
raigs
de si
mateix vers lo
qual infant
los dits Maria e
Josep segons
dit es
agenollats
contemplaran.
E los dessus dits
angels
cantaran
gloria
in excelsis. E de
continent
vinguen
los III
Reys qui
munten
per
la
porta
del dit
entrames,
muntant
per
la scala
que aqui fara
lo dit mossen
Qalom
e adorardn
l'infant
Jesus.'
The
representacions
of Valencia and Barcelona were therefore more than
a
century
behind the
English 'pageants'.
It is
likely
that
they
would
have followed the same ultimate line of
development
into a whole
cycle
of Miracle
plays
had not the new
spirit
of
Europe brought
with it altered
conditions. The
history
of the Auto Sacramental
might
then have been
different;
but we must not look for its
origins
in Catalonia.
Backward as Catalonia was in
comparison
with France or
England,
it
yet
seems to have been in advance of the rest of
Spain,
a fact not at all
surprising.
In other cities the
process
of secularisation which
finally
produced
the Auto was
delayed
for
many years.
Nothing
is known of the
Corpus
Christi
procession
at Seville until the
year
1454. There was then
only
one roca
(in
contrast to Barcelona's
108)
which carried
persons repre-
senting
Christ,
the
Virgin,
the four
Evangelists,
St Dominic and St
Francis.2
Plays
are not mentioned until the
following century,
and it is
here that we see the distinctive
Spanish development
of the future Auto
in contrast to the more
European development
of the Catalan Misteri.
Liturgical plays
must have been
performed
in the cathedral in the four-
teenth
century,
but
they appear
to have centred on the new feast of
Corpus
Christi.
Though
not connected with the recitation of the Office
of the
feast,
they yet
remained
liturgical
in the widest sense of the word
in that
they
were
regularly performed
in the
sanctuary
as
part
of the
service and not in the
open.
In 1579 a
sumptuous catafalque
was erected
in the choir of the cathedral for ceremonies connected with the transla-
tion of the remains of
sovereigns.
This left no
space
for the
performance
of the
plays,
which were therefore acted in the west
porch.
This remained
A.
Balaguer,
'De las
antigas representacions
dramaticas
y
en
especial
dels entremesos
catalans',
in El Calendari
Catald, September 22, 1871, reprinted
as
Appendix
vI to Mila
y Fontanals, op. cit.,
p.
369.
2
J. Gestoso
y Perez,
La Fiesta del
Corpus
Christi en Sevilla
(Seville, 1910), p.
94.
M.L.R. XXX
12
177
178 Notes on the
Religious
Drama in Mediaeval Spain
the custom in
succeeding years,
until the
plays
found their
way
into the
public squares
where
they
were later
exclusively performed.1
Here we
have the
Spanish
Auto Sacramental as a
development
of the
liturgical
drama without the intermediate form of the Miracle
play
evolved from
a
'pageant'.
It was able to
develop
as it did because it was not hindered
in Castile and
Andalusia,
as it would have been in
Catalonia, by having
as its
parents
a whole
cycle
of
plays.
The Auto is a
distinctly
Castilian
production.
Ih other Andalusian cities the Auto followed the same lines of
develop-
ment. At C6rdoba autos were
produced
in the cathedral to the accom-
paniment
of music and
dancing.2 Milaga
witnessed the
production
of
liturgical plays
within its cathedral on Christmas
night
and
Corpus
Christi. Dances formed
part
of the
Corpus
Christi
plays
which were first
performed
in the cathedral and then
again
at various
stages
of the
pro-
cession. In 1562 the
Chapter
decided that
they
should in future be
per-
formed in the
Chapel
of St Barbara and not in the choir. In 1574
they
announced that all
performances
would henceforth be
given
in the
porch.3
At Valladolid the church
plays appear
to have found their
way
earlier
into the
streets,
since the
Corpus
Christi festivities all
through
the fif-
teenth
century
included
juegos
and entremeses. We have no clue as to the
nature of these
spectacles,
but
they may
have been at least
rudimentary
autos since the method of their
production
foreshadows the future
pro-
cedure at Madrid. The carros in the
procession
were in
charge
of the
oficios,
but under the
supervision
of the
corregidor
and the
regidores
who
saw to it that
they
fulfilled their
obligations. They continually
insisted
upon
devout and
edifying performances,
decreeing
in 1504:
...que
se han
de hacer e se
hagan
los
juegos
e
alegrias
como mnejor e mas debotamente se
pueden
hacer,
no haziendo
juegos torpes
e
suzios. By
1541 the Munici-
pality
had
already
taken
charge
of the
productions,
and the
gradual
process
of
centralisation,
which
finally
made Calder6n the sole
poet
of the
autos in
Spain, begins
to have effect in Valladolid in
1551,
when the re-
gidores
summoned a
professional
actor-manager,
one Alonso de
Madrid,
to
superintend andformalizar
the
performances.4
This
extraordinarily
late
development
of the
Spanish religious
drama
would lead one to
suspect
that the
Morality type,
so much in
vogue
in
Europe
in the fifteenth
century,
never
appeared
in
Spain,
or at most
never had time to flourish before
purely
mediaeval conditions had altered.
1
J. Sanchez
Arjona,
El Teatro en Sevilla
(Madrid, 1887), pp.
39-40.
2
R. Ramirez de
Arellano,
El Teatro en Cordoba
(Ciudad
Real, 1912), pp.
19ff.
3
N. Diaz de
Escovar,
El Teatro en,
Malaga (Malaga, 1896), pp.
20-2.
4
N. Alonso
Cortes,
'El Teatro en
Valladolid',
in Boletin de la Real Academia
Espaiola
(1917),
iv,
pp.
601-5.
ALEXANDER A. PARKER
This,
in
fact,
was the case. No
fully developed
mediaeval
Morality
has
been discovered in
Spain.
The
only example
at all
approaching
this
type
of drama is the Mascaron of San Cucufate and
Ripoll,1
from
Catalonia,
as was to be
expected.
In this
play
the Devil accuses the Human Race
before God the
Judge,
but loses his case when Our
Lady appears
as the
prisoner's
advocate. This
allegory
is
very
weak and
primitive
in com-
parison
with a
fully developed Morality.
The
clumsy
and often childish
allegory
in the numerous
sixteenth-century
autos
andfarsas
is a sure
sign
that
allegory
in drama must have been
practically
unknown in the
pre-
ceding century.
The first writer of Moralities is Gil Vicente in such
plays
as the Auto da
Alma,
the Auto da Historia de Deos,
and more
typically
still in the
trilogy
of the Barcas. But it is not until
Lope
de
Vega begins
to write his autos that we find dramatic
allegory developed
to the extent
common in the French
Moralites,
and we have to wait for the first of
Calderon's
'philosophical'
autos,
El Pleito Matrimonial del
Cuerpo y
el
Alma,
before we
really
find
any Spanish allegorical play rivalling
the
dramatic
power
of
Everyman, although
the latter was written a
century
and a half earlier.
The
predilection
for
allegory
is one of the most
striking
features of
Italian influence
upon Spanish
literature in the fifteenth
century,
but
this new fashion was a
purely
cultured taste and never
spread
to the
people.
It exercised no influence even
upon
those court
poets
who wrote
religious plays.
Gomez
Manrique
wrote two such
plays
when the fashion
for
allegory
was at its
height,
but his
plays
are not
Moralities,
they
are
not
really
even
Miracles,
instead
they
are in the
simplest liturgical
tradi-
tion. His
Representacion
del Nacimiento de Nuestro Seior is a
simple
but
charming development
of the Pastores
type,
and the Lamentaciones
hechas
para
Semana Santa is a finished form of the
original
Planctus
Mariae. These must
obviously
have been
performed
in a church or a
private chapel.
The
liturgical
drama had thus found its
way
into the
palaces
of the nobles. The Chronicle of Don
Miguel Lucas,
Constable of
Castile,
records that at
Easter, 1461,
a
play
of the
Magi
was acted in his
palace
at Jaen. Encina wrote Christmas and Easter
plays
for the Duke
of
Alba,
and Gil Vicente did the same for the
Portuguese
court. Their
plays
are of the
simplest liturgical type,
but in their
passage
from church
to
palace (doubtless by way
of the
palace-chapel) they
have
undergone
a curious transformation.2 The Easter
plays
soon died
out,
but the
1
See Mila
y
Fontanals, op. cit.,
pp.
216-17.
2
It would be
beyond
the
scope
of this article to describe this transformation. There is
a most
interesting
and little-known
study
of this
question by
Arturo
Graf,
'II Mistero e
le
prime
forme dell' auto sacro in
Ispagna',
in Studii JDrammatici
(1878), pp.
251-325.
179
180 Notes on the
Religious
Drama in Mediceval
Spain
Christmas
plays produced
the Autos del Nacimiento cultivated
by Lope
de
Vega,
Valdivielso,
Mira de
Amescua,
and Velez de
Guevara,
but left
untouched
by
Calderon
except
in his auto El Tesoro
Escondido,
a most
original
but remote
development
of this theme.1
The transition from these
early plays
to the future Auto Sacramental
is seen in the famous
sixteenth-century
C6dice de Autos
Viejos published
by
Rouanet. Here we find the definite introduction of
allegory
and con-
sequently
the first
examples
of belated
Moralities;
such
plays
are called
farsas.
We find
also,
for the first time in
Castilian,
plays
that can be called
Miracles;
these are known as autos. The collection also contains some
farsas
del sacramento which are the
purest type
of Autos Sacramentales if
the
adjective
sacramental be taken
literally.
These are
developments
of
late
fifteenth-century
loas and
coloquios peculiar
to Castile and
Andalusia,
which were discussions on the Doctrine of the Real Presence and which
were made to
precede
the
performance
of the
autos,2
supplying
the 'sacra-
mental' element and
consequently
the
necessary
connexion with the
feast,
a connexion
required by
the
liturgical origin
of the auto. These
farsas
sacramentales tended to die
out-any
serious insistence on the
sacramental element would have
strangled
the
young
auto-but
they
survive with their
original introductory
function in Calderon's
loas,
which,
apart
from the conventional
apotheosis
at the close of most of his
autos,
are
usually
the
only strictly
sacramental
part.
Even the best of critics have not been clear as to the
early history
of
the auto. It is still
commonly
stated that there are two
kinds,
the Auto
del
Nacimiento,
and the Auto
Sacramental,
the former
being
a
develop-
ment of the Miracle
plays (Misterios),
the latter of the Moralities. 3 This
is too
simple
an
explanation.
It is evident that the
Nativity
auto is a
direct survival of the earliest form of
liturgical
drama. The Auto Sacra-
mental
develops
from a fusion of the
sixteenth-century
Miracles
(autos,
1
The
Nativity plays
seem to have survived in Calder6n's time in different
parts
of the
country.
An
example
of one of these is the Auto del Nacimiento de Cristo Nuestro Redentor
by
Juan Francisco de
Ustaroz, published
in the Revue
Hispanique (1929), LXXVI, pp.
346-9. It has almost as much
simplicity
of
style
and treatment as the
Nativity plays
of
Encina.
2
E. Cotarelo
y
Mori considered that the Farsa Sacramental
by
Hernan
Lbpez
de
Yanguas,
published
in 1520 but
probably
written some
years earlier,
earns the distinction of
being
the first Auto Sacramental
('El
Primer Auto Sacramental del Teatro
Espafiol y
noticias
de su
Autor',
in the Revista de
Archivos,
Bibliotecas
y
Museos
(1902), viI,
pp. 251-72).
This is absurd. The Auto Sacramental was no new
genre
that
suddenly sprang
to
life,
but
the
gradual
fusion of
separate
dramatic
traditions,
and it is
impossible
to
point
to this
fusion as
being
first
exemplified
in
any
one
particular play.
The innovation of the 'sacra-
mental'
element, though
a
unique Spanish phenomenon,
is the least
important
of these
traditions. In
any
case,
Sanchez
Arjona published
several
coloquios considerably
older
than
Yanguas'
Farsa and no less 'sacramental'.
3
E.g.,
A. Valbuena
Prat,
Literatura Dramitica
Espaiola
(Barcelona, 1930), pp.
15-16;
A.
Lacalle,
Velez de Guevara: Autos
(Madrid, 1931), p.
xi.
ALEXANDER A. PARKER
themselves
recently
secularised
liturgical plays)
with the Moralities
(farsas), owing
its
subject-matter chiefly
to the former and its
technique
chiefly
to the
latter,
and such direct 'sacramental' elements as it
may
possess
to the
farsas
del
sacramento,
a
peculiarly Spanish phenomenon.
It
is
misleading
to state that the
farsas
and not the
early
autos are alone
representative
of the Auto Sacramental. This is much too restrictive a
use of the word
sacramental,
since it denies the later
fully-formed
autos
any
biblical or
hagiological subject-matter,
and thus overlooks the dis-
tinction
regularly
made
by
Calderon himself between Auto sacramental
alegorico
and Auto historial
aleg6rico.
This distinction of Calder6n's
applies simply
to the nature of the
theme,
and it is
unnecessary
to
point
out that his autos of the second class are no less 'sacramental' than those
of the first. It is
true, however,
that some of the Autos
Sacramentales,
and
the most characteristic
ones,
are
pure
and
highly developed
Moralities.
But others could
only
have arisen from a fusion of the Moralities with
the
Miracles,
of the
farsas
with the autos.
Allegory,
which derives from
the
farsas,
is the
only
feature which
essentially distinguishes
the Auto
Sacramental from the
Comedia,
the
question
of
length being really
im-
material.1 The
autos,
when left to
themselves,
produced
the comedias
biblicas and the comedias de santos.
To conclude
briefly.
The survival of the
mediaeval
church drama in
Spain permitted
it to achieve at the hands of Calder6n a
poetical
and
technical
perfection
denied it in other countries. This survival in an
age
when literature had become a conscious art is
clearly
to be attributed to
the remarkable backwardness of its
development
in
Spain,
a
point
which
has not been realised
by
historians of the
early Spanish
theatre. So
primi-
tive and
rudimentary
were the Miracles and Moralities in sixteenth-
century Spain
that
they
had
not,
as in
France,
fallen into a state of
decay
and
consequent disrepute
when
professional
and talented dramatists
began
to
appear.
Their artistic
potentialities
were still
evident,
and these
dramatists therefore took over these
simple plays
and imbued them with
a
style
and
spirit
that made them
acceptable
to the learned and cultured
without
estranging
the
sympathies
of the humble
by
a lack of
popular
1
Even
Ludwig
Pfandl's historical
conception
of the auto is
misleading,
due to the
belief,
widely
held but
erroneous,
that the Auto Sacramental is
exclusively
eucharistic in aim and
character. He
writes,
for
instance,
of Timoneda's autos: 'Freilich ist auch hier der
Anfang
noch nicht
Vollendung,
und die Elemente des
profanen
und des
allgemein religiosen
Dramas vermischen sich mit
jenen
des eucharistischen
solange,
bis Calderon die reine und
exklusive Form des auto sacramental
geschaffen
hat'
(Geschichte
der
spanischen National-
literatur in ihrer Blutezeit
(Freiburg
im
Breisgau, 1929), p. 120).
It is
precisely
this Ver-
mischung
of these different
elements,
still crude in
Timoneda,
that
produces
the Auto
Sacramental,
and that lies
essentially
behind the construction of Calder6n's reine und
exklusive Form of the auto. This is a
point
that I
hope
to make clear in a detailed
study
of Calder6n's autos.
181
182 Notes on the
Religious
Drama in Mediceval
Spain
appeal.
These
plays
were also
peculiarly
suited to
embody
one of the
great
national ideals of the time-the
struggle against
the Reformation.
For this reason as well as for the fact that it continued to draw its life
from the
people though
it owed its form to the
genius
of cultured
poets,
the mediseval
religious
drama was able to become one of the most national
manifestations of
Spanish
literature
and,
with
Calderon,
something
splendid
and
unique
in the
history
of the
stage. But,
apart
from these
'literary'
reasons for the survival of this
type
of
drama,
there is a 'cul-
tural' reason which must not be
overlooked,
and which of itself
might
have achieved the same
result,
the
fact,
namely,
that the Renaissance in
Spain
was never
permitted
to break with the traditions of mediaeval life
and
culture, but,
on the
contrary,
was so directed as to
revivify
them and
make them bloom afresh.
ALEXANDER A. PARKER.
CAMBRIDGE.