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Flagellation of the Son of God and Divine Flagellation: Flagellator Ceremonies and Flagellation Scenes in the Medieval Passion Play1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2008

FRIEDEMANN KREUDER
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Abstract

Medieval Passion Plays appear to be no less violent than the flagellation and crucifixion scenes in Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. They were performed with what to today's eyes appears to be, in the context of its presentation in a religious play, chillingly intense and explicit violence. This suspicion is supported by surviving descriptions of performances of medieval Passion Plays in London and Metz, in each of which the actor playing Jesus in the crucifixion scene was fatally injured by the thrust of Longinus' spear or nearly died of heart failure. The expansion of what in the Bible amounts to only brief description, and its formulation in terms of drama, suggest deliberate use of the torture scenario in different Passion Plays. However, a question arises concerning the way in which the scenes of violence were able to find a place in religious plays used by ecclesiastical and municipal sponsors to propagate and affirm the dominant Christian view of the world. According to a common school of thought, the plays realistically represented, through gestural and dramatic elaboration, what the liturgy celebrated in a symbolic ceremony. In this way the plays visually communicated religious instruction to onlookers who did not know any Latin. But how can the torture scenes – on which many Passion Plays linger so long – be reconciled with the purpose of depicting the story of salvation?

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Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , July 2008 , pp. 176 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2008

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References

NOTES

2 On the American debate see Beal, Timothy K. and Linafelt, Tod, eds., Mel Gibson's Bible: Religion, Popular Culture, and ‘The Passion of the Christ’ (Afterlives of the Bible) (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

3 The manuscript of the Frankfurter Passionsspiel (The Frankfurt Passion Play) of 1493 stands in close relationship to three major performances of 1492, 1498 and 1506. The performance conception and the bases for some scenes in the Frankfurter manuscript are drawn from an older Frankfurt Passion Play. As documented by contemporary council records, the period of religious plays reached its peak in Frankfurt in 1492. This is the earliest year for which there is evidence that a company of players consisting of clerics and laypeople existed which carefully maintained good relations with the council. On the documentary evidence see Freise, Dorothea, Geistliche Spiele in der Stadt des ausgehenden Mittelalters: Frankfurt, Friedberg, Alsfeld (Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, 178) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2002), pp. 342 and 146Google Scholar.

4 In Janota, Johannes, ed., Frankfurter Dirigierrolle and Frankfurter Passionsspiel (Die Hessische Passionsspielgruppe, Vol. I) (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1996), pp. 343–4Google Scholar. A rough translation into modern English follows from Middle High German.

5 Gréban, Arnoul, Le Mystère de la Passion, ed. Jodogne, Omer (Brussels: Académie Royale, 1965)Google Scholar; Michel, Jean, Le Mystère de la Passion (Angers 1486), ed. Jodogne, Omer (Gemblou, Belgium: J. Duculot, 1959)Google Scholar.

6 See Righter, Anne, Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play, 2nd edn (London: Chatto and Windus, 1964), p. 27Google Scholar, who cites Thomas Beards, Theatre of God's Judgement (1631), for the historical source; and Enders, Jody, Death by Drama and Other Medieval Urban Legends (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 55Google Scholar.

7 On this point see Enders's discourse-historical analyses of medieval performance reports in Death by Drama, especially pp. 55–66, as well as her evaluation of the above-mentioned ‘intrusion of reality’ in the Metz Passion Play (Passionsspiel von Metz) of 1437, p. 64.

8 Enders, Death by Drama, p. 58.

9 Here I point the reader to the parallels to the Mystères de la Passion by Arnoul Gréban and Jean Michel.

10 Williams, Raymond, Culture and Society (London: Fontana, 1981), pp. 207–8Google Scholar.

11 Concerning the discussion on whether the religious plays are ritual or theatre, compare Beckwith, Sarah, ‘Ritual, Church and Theatre: Medieval Dramas of the Sacramental Body’, in Aers, David, ed., Culture and History, 1350–1600: Essays on Culture, Community, Identity and Writing (New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), pp. 65–89Google Scholar; Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400–c.1580 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Müller, Jan-Dirk, ‘Mimesis und Ritual. Zum geistlichen Spiel des Mittelalters’, in Kablitz, Andreas and Neumann, Gerhard, eds., Mimesis und Simulation (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 1998), pp. 541–71Google Scholar; Petersen, Christoph, Ritual und Theater. Meßallegorese, Osterfeier und Osterspiel im Mittelalter (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2004)Google Scholar; Schulze, Ursula, ‘Formen der Repraesentatio im Geistlichen Spiel’, in Haug, Walter, ed., Mittelalter und frühe Neuzeit. Übergänge, Umbrüche und Neuansätze (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1999), pp. 312–56Google Scholar; Wolf, Gerhard, ‘Inszenierte Wirklichkeit und literarisierte Aufführung. Bedingungen und Funktion der performance in Spiel- und Chroniktexten des Spätmittelalters’, in Müller, Jan-Dirk, ed., ‘Aufführung’ und ‘Schrift’ in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit (Germanistische Symposien Berichtsbände 17) (Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 1996), pp. 381–405CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Fiebach, Joachim, ‘Theatricality: From Oral Traditions to Televised “Realities”’, SubStance, 31 (2002), pp. 17–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 17.

13 I use the term ‘intercorporeal’ to designate those moments of interaction between performers and spectators in which the body of the actor appears not only as carrier of meaning, but as that which the body actually is. Intercorporeality is at first limited to the perception of the gestalt, rhythm, intensity, fluidity of movements and gestures of the actor's body. However, at the same time, it is the basis for producing (symbolic) meaning. See Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Ästhetik des Performativen (Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp, 2004), pp. 129–60Google Scholar, concerning the notion of corporeality on which I am basing my concept.

14 Compare Elizabeth Wainwright, Studien zum deutschen Prozessionsspiel: Die Tradition der Fronleichnamsspiele in Künzelsaus und Freiburg und ihre textliche Entwicklung (Münchener Beiträge zur Mediävistik und Renaissanceforschung, 16) (Munich: Arbeo Society, 1974); Kathleen M. Ashley, Moving Subjects: Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Ludus, 5) (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001). I point the reader to the current research by Heidy Greco-Kaufmann on the Lucerne Easter plays of 1470 and 1583. See Heidy Greco-Kaufmann, ‘Von paraliturgischen Handlungen zum barocken Schauereignis: Genese und Entwicklung des Luzerner Osterspiels’, in Friedemann Kreuder, Stefan Hulfeld and Andreas Kotte, eds., Theaterhistoriographie: Kontinuitäten und Brüche in Diskurs und Praxis (Tübingen: Francke, 2007), pp. 65 ff. and 74–6. For the Frankfurt Passion Play, no documents exist which would allow absolute assumptions concerning the arrangement of the medieval stage, which is why I go back to the fundamental research on the performance practice of other plays, which are better documented.

15 See Wenzel, Horst and Lechtermann, Christina, ‘Repräsentation und Kinästhetik’, in Fischer-Lichte, Erika and Wulf, Christoph, eds., Theorien des Performativen (Berlin: Akademie, 2001), pp. 191–213Google Scholar (Paragrana. 10, 1), here pp. 193 ff.

16 Compare Freise, Geistliche Spiele, p. 128.

17 Ibid., p. 209.

18 The English translation is my own rendering of Niklaus Largier's German translation of Salimbene of Parma – Chronica fratris Salimbene de Adam Ordinis minorum – who writes about the Italian flagellation processions during the autumn of 1260. See Largier, Niklaus, In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Excitement, trans. Harman, Graham (New York: Zone Books, 2006), p. 89Google Scholar (originally published as Lob der Peitsche. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Erregung (Munich: Beck, 2001)).

19 Heinrich von Herford, Liber de rebus memorabilibus, p. 281, cited after the German translation by Largier, p.108.

20 The texts are comprehensively recorded in the chronicles of Fritsche Closener and also of Hugo von Reutlingen in the Magdeburg Chronicles (Magdeburger Schöppenchronik) and in the Limburg Chronicles. Compare Largier, p. 109, as well as the relevant study by Hübner, Arthur, Die deutschen Geißlerlieder. Studien zum geistlichen Volksliede des Mittelalters (Berlin and Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1931)Google Scholar.

21 See, on this point, Largier, pp. 138 ff.

22 Froning, Richard, Das Drama des Mittelalters, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1891–2), Vol. II, pp. 556–7Google Scholar.

23 Wolf, Klaus, ed., Frankfurter Dirigierrolle – Frankfurter Passionsspiel (Die Hessische Passionsspielgruppe, Suppl. Vol. I) (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2002)Google Scholar.

24 See Wolf, Frankfurter Dirigierrolle – Frankfurter Passionsspiel, pp. 778–9.

25 Friedrich Ohly, review of Rainer Warning, Funktion und Struktur. Die Ambivalenzen des geistlichen Spiels, in Friedrich Ohly, Ausgewählte und neue Schriften zur Literaturgeschichte und zur Bedeutungsforschung, ed. Uwe Ruberg and Dietmar Peil (Stuttgart and Leipzig: Hirzel, 1995), pp. 111–41, here p. 113. Ohly's review was first published in Romanistische Forschungen 91 (1979).

26 See Kiesow, Gottfried, Gotik in Hessen (Stuttgart: Theiss, 1988), pp. 201–2Google Scholar.

27 Ehrenfried, Adalbert, Die Liebfrauenkirche Frankfurt am Main (Schnell Kunstführer, 1071) (Munich and Zurich: Schnell und Steiner, 1977), p. 16Google Scholar.

28 On this and the following see Freise, Geistliche Spiele, p. 381.

29 See ibid., p. 386.

30 Enders, J., The Medieval Theater of Cruelty: Rhetoric, Memory, Violence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

31 The public flagellation ceremony was prosecuted with draconian punishments by the clergy following the first ‘wave’ of its mass popularization in the fourteenth century, although even by the late Middle Ages this had not been enough to check the movement completely.

32 In this regard I point the reader to the relevant study by Rainer Warning, who finds in the torture and crucifixion scenes of the Passion Plays the latent structure of a scapegoating ritual. See Warning, Rainer, Funktion und Struktur: Die Ambivalenzen des geistlichen Spiels (Theorie und Geschichte der Literatur und der schönen Künste, 35) (Munich: Fink, 1974), pp. 184–243Google Scholar.

33 Enders, Death by Drama, p. 66.

34 See Williams, Culture and Society, p. 208.