Playing Thieves - Passion Performance in the Medieval West

Description

Abstract: As early as the second half of the eighth century, a curious rubric appears in the liturgical instructions for the solemn reading of the Passion narrative in the Good Friday liturgy. Two acolytes are instructed to remove a cloth (sindon) that had been placed beneath the gospel book on the altar “like a thief” (in modum furantis).
In some versions, the instruction seems to follow the entire recitation of the Passion, in others, it is to be performed after John’s account of the soldiers’ casting lots for Christ’s tunic, and the evangelist’s quotation of verses from Psalm 22: “They divided my clothes among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.”
The rubric, which has received scant scholarly attention, is exceptional in its provision of instruction regarding not only what to do and the mechanics of performance, but the manner of performance. The mode of ritual performance is tied to an imagined figure (a thief) external to the narrative and ritual itself: the Passion itself does not refer to the soldiers as thieves. Moreover, this brief dramatic detail requiring acolytes using both material objects and gesture to behave in the manner of another person (and a wicked one at that) in the middle of ritual reading of a narrative appears significantly earlier than the well-known Easter Quem queritis dialogue, widely considered the earliest example of liturgical drama (attested by the mid tenth century). If the text pre-dates
This paper will trace the origin, and development of this remarkable rubric, and will explore its relationship to the performance of the Passion, and contemporary interpretations both of the biblical narrative, and of liturgical texts and practices. Finally, I will use this important earlier, albeit fragmentary, case of performance practice to address a number of current questions regarding the relationship between narrative, text, and performance in early medieval liturgy.

Period	27-Sept-2017 → 29-Sept-2017
Event title	Medialität und Materialität "großer Narrative"
Event type	Conference
Location	Krems an der Donau, AustriaShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International