Textual Spaces / Playing Places:

An Exploration of Convent Drama

in the Abbey of Origny-Sainte-Benoîte

KATE MATTHEWS

T
he genre of Convent Drama is a largely unexplored field as a definite strand
of theatre history. This article examines the theatrical works from the French
Benedictine Abbey of Origny-Sainte-Benoîte as pieces of Convent Drama in
their own right: that is, pieces that were written, adapted, and staged by women, both
for audiences of female religious in private and for mixed lay and clerical, male and
female audiences in public.
In the current vibrant field of feminist theatre history, this performance tradition
provides rich pickings for the historian who wishes to trace the theatrical traditions
of her forebears. The work of Elissa Weaver and of Arenal and Schlau has explored
a large number of Italian and Spanish manuscripts from the early modern period, but
these have been treated predominantly from a literary standpoint.1 The medieval
texts that have emerged from English, French, Belgian, Spanish, German, and Polish
convents give a strong indication of the theatrical sophistication of many Brides of
Christ who were involved in actively producing, writing, directing, and performing
site-specific works, for both public and private audiences.2 These works grew out of
the traditions of liturgical drama but were repeatedly adapted and developed by
generations of convent women and provide the theatrical context for the works
studied by Elissa Weaver and Arenal and Schlau.

1
See Elissa Weaver, Convent Theatre in Early Modern Italy: Spiritual Fun and Learning
for Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); E. Arenal and S. Schlau, Untold
Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in their Own Works, trans. Amanda Powell (Alberquerque: University
of New Mexico Press, 1989).
2
All these texts can be found in Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2 vols
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933).
70 KATE MATTHEWS

The pieces that are the focus of this article arise out of the specific religious
festival of Easter: a Ludus Paschalis script and the texts of several versions of a
Visitatio Sepulchri. As ‘occasional’ pieces, these plays can be used to investigate six
central aspects of Convent Drama: firstly, as pieces of drama that are not ‘closet’,
but which demonstrate the change of voice and shift of thematic emphasis between a
public and private audience; secondly, as an active contributor to the theatrical works
produced by the wider faith community; thirdly, as pieces of performance that were
designed for specific performance spaces; fourthly, as works that reveal the preoccu-
pations of Brides of Christ about developing a specifically gendered female spiritual-
ity in the medieval and early modern periods; fifthly, as pieces of drama that create
and emphasize strong female role models, particularly in the central figure of Mary
Magdalene; and, finally, as pieces written, adapted, and produced by subsequent
generations of Brides of Christ, who were conscious contributors to the development
of the medieval forms of liturgical drama into early modern dramatic forms, and to
the traditions of female theatre practitioners.
Before turning to the text of the Ludus Paschalis, the context for production of
drama at Origny must be examined. Originally the female community at Mont-
d’Origny was dedicated to St Waast, and they built a church dedicated to St Peter
where, in 876, the relics of Benoîte were laid. The community found itself under the
protection of Charles-le-Chauve and his wife Ermentrude, niece of the Comte de
Vermandois. They secured various gifts for the convent, including those from the
Comte de Vermandois, the Lords of Ribémont and Moy, King Louis and his son
Philippe-le-Hardi, ensuring not only material wealth but noble status for the
community. This status was confirmed and boosted by the convent’s frequent royal
visitors, and the Abbey boasted a suite of rooms called ‘la chambre du Roi’ and ‘le
logis de M. le Dauphin’. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the convent made noble birth a
condition of entrance and numbered forty professed nuns and four servants. Along-
side them lived the ‘soeurs converses’ who performed the more menial tasks of the
convent’s life and administration. The main dignitaries of the Abbey were the
Abbess, three Prioresses, a female Chaplain, the Chantress, the Sacrist, the Organist,
the Hospital Matron, and a Cellaress.
In order to examine the dramas of the Ludus Paschalis and the Visitatio as site-
specific pieces, a brief exploration of the Abbey precinct must be given. The Abbey
was frequently subject to ruin and fire, and was obviously incapable of defending
itself, since it was attacked in 1339 by the English, in 1414 by the Bourguignons, in
1552 by the army of Marie of Austria, in 1537 and 1595 by the Spanish, and finally
in 1642 a great fire destroyed most of the battlements and meant the convent had to
be almost entirely rebuilt. Consequently, little is known of the original Abbey build-
ings. In 1857 C. Gomart published an article on the history of the Abbey, together
with a reconstructed plan of the medieval buildings.3 What is interesting about this

3
C. Gomart, ‘L’Abbaye d’Origny-Ste-Benoîte’, Revue de l’Art Chrétien, 1 (1857), 406–
15. The following account of the history and buildings of Origny is the only one I have found.
Textual Spaces / Playing Places 71

plan is the clear move from public to private spaces that is modulated by the
presence of the Abbess’s house, which overlooks both the inner and outer precincts.
Next to this in the outer court is the lodge for visitors and perhaps for some of the
dignitaries of the house, since it comprised eight apartments.
The other side of the Abbess’s house is the Abbey church that lies next to the
cloister. Around the cloister, doors lead to the church, the sacristry, the chapter
house, the dormitory with forty-two bedrooms, and the kitchen. Behind the kitchen
all the dependent services were placed, the infirmary with its own chapel and apothe-
cary, and the servants’ lodgings, situated around a court that led to the convent’s
gardens. To the east is the farm, with its independent baker and butcher and granges,
with six hectares of farmland on the other side of the River Oise that ran next to the
farm’s Basse-Cour. Clearly, the Abbey was extremely self-sufficient inside its own
precinct, perhaps partially as a result of being attacked so many times. The Abbey
also housed its own prison, although it is unclear where it was situated. From the
fifteenth century, in times of dire need the convent would seek shelter in a house of
refuge in Saint-Quentin, which was eventually given the name ‘Petit-Origny’ in the
seventeenth century. This house of shelter was insufficient to protect the Abbey
during the French revolution, and in 1792 the Abbey closed, with its twenty-five
nuns and fifteen secondary sisters being chased out by revolutionaries and their
Abbess, Madame de Narbonne, being arrested in Saint-Quentin and killed.
One further contextual point must be considered before turning to a discussion of
the manuscripts, that of the status of the Abbess of this high-profile Abbey, who
authorized and took part in the Convent Drama produced by the Abbey. The
Abbey’s self-sufficient design would have been aided by the prestige which the
Abbess brought to the house, and the list of Abbesses is littered with the names of
Bourbon, Lorraine, and Cresquy, the daughters and nieces of Dukes and Princesses.
The Abbess was elected by the King, and the choice was confirmed by the Bishop of
Laon. The newly elected Abbess would return to the Abbey on a white horse sur-
rounded by her ladies of honour. She would then be inducted by the Bishop,
Archdeacons, and surrounding local clergy. Her prestigious rank would be immedi-
ately recognized by anyone when she left the Abbey to conduct business, since she
was always driven in a carriage drawn by four horses.
The high status of this convent may provide the reason for its choosing the princi-
pal feast of Easter to stage at least one, if not two, theatrical performances to a well-
connected audience, thereby displaying not only pomp and ceremony but also the
strong identity that this particular community of Brides of Christ had developed.
Further, the convent of Origny may have used these performance texts to connect
them to other religious institutions, forming a wider sense of spiritual community
and again boosting the Abbey’s prestigious status. It is these manuscripts that
suggest that a specific female dramatic convention did exist and spread between
French convents in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

I have therefore been unable to check the accuracy of Gomart’s statements. Gomart’s plan is
found on p. 410.
72 KATE MATTHEWS

As has been indicated above, it is a central aspect of Convent Drama that it is

viewed as an active contributor to the theatrical works produced by the wider faith
community. Thus the extant scripts that we shall examine in a moment seem to indi-
cate a connection between the Ludus Paschalis of Origny-Sainte-Benoîte and those
of Sainte-Croix at Poitiers and Notre-Dame-aux-Nonnains at Troyes. There is also a
further possibility of an international connection between Origny and Barking and
Holy Trinity, Dublin.4 How these plays might have been disseminated, changed, and
influenced is, in most cases, a matter of conjecture. However, the textual similarities
are convincing enough to raise the question as to whether the practice of liturgical
drama, written (or at least adapted) by women, for female actors, for an audience of
laity and clergy at the principal feast of Easter, was sufficiently widespread for
feminist theatre historians to categorize medieval Convent Drama as a distinct genre,
with its own networks of exchange and growth.
Edith Wright5 gives particular prominence to the role that the Benedictine monas-
teries played as centres of creativity and as disseminators of liturgical drama. Chap-
ter meetings, councils, diocesan ceremonies, and regional influences all play a part,
as do personal and familial connections between houses. For example, the con-
clusions of the Visitatio Sepulchri from Sainte-Croix and from Notre-Dame-aux-
Nonnains are the same: ‘Salve, rex Sabbaoth’.6 This line appears only in these two
extant manuscripts. No direct links have yet been found between these convents, and
yet one must have existed. Could the exchange of manuscripts and dramatic forms
have been mediated by Origny?
Whilst the Visitatio from Sainte-Croix is similar to that of Origny, it also begins
with the same line as the Visitatio from the cathedral of Poitiers, and the first line is
found elsewhere only at Saint-Martial and Ripoll.7 The influence of Saint-Martial at
Limoges on liturgical drama has been well documented8 and does not need repeating
here, except to remark on the relative geographical proximity of Poitiers and
Limoges. Links between the two are found throughout the eleventh century during
the series of councils that were held at Poitiers and Limoges to discuss whether
St Martial was one of the seventy-two apostles of Christ, and there is evidence of the
Bishop of Limoges and the Bishop of Poitiers working together in the thirteenth
century as co-executors of the will of Hugues, Count of La Marche.9

4
See Kate Matthews, ‘Brides of Christ: An Exploration of Convent Drama c. 1100–1500’
(unpublished doctoral thesis, Royal Holloway College, University of London, 2002).
5
E. A. Wright, The Dissemination of the Liturgical Drama in France (Bryn Mawr: Penn-
sylvania University Press, 1936).
6
Wright, Dissemination of the Liturgical Drama, p. 40.
7
Wright, Dissemination of the Liturgical Drama, p. 38.
8
This is particularly the case throughout Young’s The Drama of the Medieval Church.
9
Wright, Dissemination of the Liturgical Drama, p. 38.
Textual Spaces / Playing Places 73

Since there are no records of dates of either composition or performances, did the
influence of Saint-Martial on the Sainte-Croix text come via the cathedral at
Poitiers? Other than their shared Benedictine heritage there seem to be no direct
extant links between Sainte-Croix and Saint-Martial, or between Origny and Saint-
Martial. But it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that clergy from Saint-Martial
or the cathedral at Poitiers saw each other’s liturgical dramas, or that clergy from
these places saw the Visitatio at Sainte-Croix. Or did the cathedral take its Visitatio
from the convent of Sainte-Croix, which it then adapted to the Saint-Martial text? If
the latter, the power of a female convent to shape liturgical drama has been his-
torically understated.
Given the high status of the Abbey at Origny, connections with Saint-Martial and
Poitiers are perhaps more understandable. Whilst the task of determining the gender
of the ‘original’ author of the text may be fraught with difficulties, it is clearly
shown in the Origny Livre de Trésorerie that the scripts of a Ludus Paschalis and
two Vistatio Sepulchri have been specifically adapted for use in the convent. This
can be seen most easily in the case of the Ludus Paschalis: firstly, by the predomi-
nance of female playing parts (five out of the nine parts could have been played by
women); secondly, by the use of vernacular French to heighten the emotion and
pathos of the three Marys’ mission to anoint the body of their Lord, and to soften the
use of liturgical Latin for the main parts of the story; thirdly, by the addition of
French stage directions, which, although they do not refer specifically to Origny,
certainly encourage a theatre historian to see a text which has been compiled with
performance in mind. In all three instances the sense of the presence of a communal
female expression is strong.
Particularly in the case of Origny, it is possible to see how performance texts
might be used to form a wider sense of community, by influencing the performance
practice at other convents. This raises questions of how an enclosed female commu-
nity might break some of the boundaries of claustration, not only by performing
plays at the principal feasts of Christmas and Easter for themselves, clergy, and laity,
but by passing the texts on for other convents to do the same. Each subsequent
genesis of the performance text thus reveals the issues that concern each community
in its particular temporal and spatial environment. The interpretative choices made
also allow feminist historians to analyse to what extent female monastic communi-
ties could determine their representation as individual and corporate Brides of Christ
to the world beyond their own cloister.
The Ludus Paschalis10 (or Les Trois Maries)11 begins with a procession of the
three Marys, each with a lit candle in her hand. Mary Magdalene also has a box of
10
Robert Marichal, Le Théâtre en France au Moyen Age: Textes Choisis (Paris: Centre de
Documentation Universitaire, 1958), pp. 4–12. All following citations are from this edition
and no line numbers are given.
11
Edmond de Coussemaker, ‘Ludus Paschalis from Origny-Sainte-Benoîte’, in his Drames
Liturgiques du Moyen Âge (Rennes: Vatar, 1860), pp. 256–79.
74 KATE MATTHEWS

spices in her hand, and they are preceded by a Priest with a censer and followed by
the choir, each with a lit candle in her hand. The Three Marys are immediately
identifiable, not only by the occasion of the performance and their props, but by their
own introduction, which the choir repeats: ‘Maria Magdalene et alia Maria ferebant
diluculo aromata Dominum querentes in monumento.’ The procession is of suffi-
cient length for the choir to accompany the Marys’ entrance by singing the response
‘Dominum querentes in monumento’ three times, as they tell the audience of the
Marys’ mission to anoint Christ’s dead body. (Presumably the Marys, clergy, and
choir process in either from the west door down the nave or from the cloisters around
the church until they reach the Merchant’s stall.) The Marys sing together, and the
three voices combined give powerful expression to the ideas of grief, loss, and lack
of hope. When they arrive at the Merchant’s stall, the language immediately changes
to the vernacular, signifying not only the extra-scriptural nature of this scene, but
also the profanity of the Merchant himself. Mary Magdalene hangs back, as the other
two Marys bargain with the Merchant for his wares. The Merchant is aware that he is
dealing with women who ‘tant fort amés’, and it is this, alongside a conviction of
their courage, that encourages him to give the two Marys the best ointment at a
knock-down price. The strength of their emotion is shown to convince him so much
that he asks them, ‘Merci querés a lui, dames, pour moi.’ His conversion is then
confirmed: ‘Douce(s) dames, ne demandés mais ce; Certes je voil aler aprés Jhesu.
Tout cil sont sot cui ne vont aprés lui.’
The Merchant is invited to go with the Marys to see Christ’s body in the tomb. It
is unclear from the stage directions whether he does so, and he is not referred to
again. But just as the above speech was directed obliquely to the laity in the audi-
ence, ‘those who do not want to follow after him [Jesus] are stupid’, so the perfor-
mance implies, those who do follow will see Christ. We can presume that in the
same way that the Merchant represented the laity on stage, so the laity can represent
the Merchant in the audience as they follow the play’s action to the sepulchre.
The two Marys then rejoin Mary Magdalene and the three go together to the
sepulchre with their spices. On arriving at the sepulchre they sing ‘Quis revolvet?’
which is the cue for two angels to appear, dressed in white, one sitting at the head of
where the body should be, one at the feet. In response to their questions, the angels
uncover the sepulchre saying ‘Non jacet hic, quia surrexit, venite et videte’ and,
whilst they sing ‘En ecce locus quo positus fuerat Dominus’, the three Marys
approach and kiss the sepulchre. The angels re-cover the sepulchre and the Latin
section ends with the angels giving the instruction ‘Recordamini qualiter loqutus sit
nobis cum adhuc esset in Galileam, dicens quia oportebat filium hominis pati et die
tercia resurgere’. The two Marys leave Mary Magdalene alone at the sepulchre with
the Angels whilst presumably they fetch the disciples (although they arrive back at
the sepulchre before the Apostles).
The section that follows in French is the heart of the play and is unique in extant
manuscripts of the Visitatio Sepulchri. It is a heart-rending exploration of the Mag-
dalene’s grief, with the repetition of the response ‘je cuit de duel me tuerai, Dolante!
Textual Spaces / Playing Places 75

Ta mors au cuer grant duel me plante!’. The close relationship between Mary
Magdalene and Christ is revealed, and she is possessive about ‘mon douc Signour’.
The angels treat her with particular kindness in her special grief and to them she is
‘douce dame’ or ‘ma douce amie’. After this extended dialogue, the text reverts to
Latin for the encounter with Christ. Once he has revealed himself to Mary Magda-
lene and sung ‘Noli me tangere’, unusually he goes to the other two Marys who are
waiting nearby, announces his resurrection to them as they kneel at his feet, and
gives them the instruction, ‘Ite, nuntiate fratribus meis, alleluia, ut eant in Galileam;
ibi me videbunt, alleluya, alleluya, alleluya.’ As Christ leaves, the three Marys an-
nounce his resurrection together and the liturgical nature of the drama is reasserted
by the choir’s response ‘Deo gratias: Deo Gratias!’.
The final stage of the play commences as the two Apostles appear and take Mary
Magdalene by the sleeve and pull her aside to ask ‘Quid vidisti in via?’. Mary Mag-
dalene shows them the sepulchre on the right, and with the stage direction chante en
haut (loudly), announces the resurrection to the Apostles. The three Marys then
emphasize this with the anthem ‘Angelicos testes’, and Mary Magdalene, waiting in
her place, sings ‘Spes nostra’ alone. She then turns from the right to the other side
and gives the instruction to the Apostles: ‘Precedet vos in Galileam.’ The Apostles
then run to the tomb, as the choir gives the scriptural gloss to their actions and names
one of the Apostles as Peter. In one of the few French stage directions that imply
how a line is to be sung, the Apostles sing endementiers that ‘Credendum est magis
soli Marie veraci quam Judeorum turbe fallaci’. Together the three Marys confirm
again Christ’s resurrection, this time in much more triumphant terms, and the
Apostles stand and chant ‘on high’: ‘Cernitis, o socie’. The Apostles then display the
linen cloths and the sudary as the three Marys kneel and kiss the sudary. This
moment of tableau is then broken as the Apostles replace the sudary in the sepulchre
and the three Marys together sing an anthem. It is unclear what this final antiphon is,
although Coussemaker suggests it is the Te Deum12 and Young suggests it is either
Surrexit Dominus de sepulchro or Surrexit enim sicut dixit and followed by the Te
Deum,13 since the Te Deum is seldom, if ever, called an antiphon or sung by the
Marys. This last line does however seem to be the only missing piece from this play.
What is clear therefore is that this Ludus Paschalis was written to expand the
traditional liturgical sections of the Easter story, and that it uses vernacular French to
do so. Was this done for the actors, who might have struggled with their Latin? Or
was it done for the lay audience, who also might have struggled to capture the mean-
ing of unfamiliar poetic passages in non-liturgical Latin? Or was there a more con-
ceptual idea behind the author’s attempts to expand the female roles of this play and
to heighten the role that emotion and female spirituality play in the Easter story?
Any, or all, of these reasons might account for the specificity of the Ludus being
designed for a convent performance and for its popularity and dissemination.

12
Coussemaker, ‘Ludus Paschalis from Origny-Sainte-Benoîte’, p. 279.
13
Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, II, 419, n. 4.
76 KATE MATTHEWS

This then is another of the central aspects of Convent Drama: the production and
performance of strong female role models for the Bride of Christ. Did the extended
development of the characterization of Mary Magdalene make this play attractive to
female monastics with an eye for dramatic performance, who then circulated it
around like-minded friends? It is certainly of particular interest to feminist theatre
historians, since convent performance would ensure this important part was played
by a woman. However, although it is the Magdalene’s interaction with Christ which
provides the emotional focus of the Easter story, the author here instead chose to
enhance the audience’s knowledge of Mary as a female believer before that climatic
scene in the garden. For an audience of nuns, and indeed for the actress playing
Mary, the intimate vernacular exchange between Mary Magdalene and the Angels,
which inserts the language of courtly love into a liturgical context, fully establishes
Mary as a lover: a bride mourning desperately for her lost lover and as a result ques-
tioning her own existence and identity. Such an opportunity for transference of
sexual and spiritual experience between character, actress, and audience is extremely
unusual in the non-naturalistic genres that are found in medieval drama. But the
author took a risk by placing Mary as the central emotionally expressive character
and moving away from the sparse biblical narrative. Mary clearly becomes the pat-
tern of a Bride of Christ for her spiritual female descendents because her emotions
are dramatized, showing the relationship between Christ and his lover as the funda-
mental encounter of the Easter story.
The identification of Mary Magdalene as the pattern for the Bride of Christ was
well established by the end of the thirteenth century, as theologians saw her as typi-
fying both the convert to and the lover of Christ. Ultimately, she became the personi-
fication of the allegorical Bride of Christ in the Song of Songs. Yet Mary Magdalene
was also a useful figure for a male Church authority wishing to repress unhelpful
displays of female sexuality amongst both claustrated and lay women. The full
extent of fallen female sexual embodiment could be personified in Mary Magdalene,
who could both experience and articulate shame and sorrow at her sinfulness.
The Origny Ludus Paschalis characterization of Mary Magdalene owes much to
the more contemplative version of her that was propagated by Bernard of Clairvaux
in Sermon 57:
The fire that is God does indeed devour but it does not debase [. . .]. [It is] a fire that
rages against vices only to produce a healing unction in the soul. Recognize therefore
that the Lord is present both in the power that transforms you and in the love that sets
you aglow [. . .]. It is characteristic of true and pure contemplation that, when the mind
is ardently aglow with God’s love, it is sometimes so filled with zeal and the desire to
gather to God [. . .]. We find a contemplative Mary in those who, co-operating with
God’s grace over a long period of time, have attained to a better and happier state.14

14
Yoshikawa Naoe Kukita, ‘The Bride of Christ: The Iconography of Mary Magdalene
and Cistercian Spirituality’, Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic-Literary Studies,
47 (1997), 33–47 (p. 36).
Textual Spaces / Playing Places 77

Bernard’s sermon puts every Bride of Christ in a double bind. The female
monastic can articulate her sexual and spiritual desire in her soul but not in her body,
in private but not in public:
Mary Magdalene ceased to weep when she recognized the risen Lord by her eyes. She
was relying more on her sensuous experience than on faith [. . .]. You cannot touch the
Lord by your hands, for it is only with the meditative soul that you can embrace the
ecstatic union with God.15
By removing the focus from a woman being an active agent, the Church not only
attempted to limit ‘dangerous’ sexual ‘exhibitionism’, it also placed itself in the
position of moral arbiter of what is acceptable in imaginative, contemplative terms.
As a result, the Bride of Christ can only use her female imagination to set up an
increasing spiral of intensifying mental, physical, and emotional desire with simulta-
neous mental, physical, and emotional repression.
It is this spiral which Mary Magdalene’s behaviour in the Ludus Paschalis seems
to subvert. Her grief arises partially because she had expected to lay hands on her
lover’s body and anoint him, and the iconography of the prop she has with her, the
ointment box, confirms, to both the actress and the audience, that she is seen as the
same woman who washed Christ’s feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.
In death, as in life, Mary and Christ had a physical relationship, and Mary gives full
expression to her disappointed expectations in this play. By doing so, each Bride of
Christ following her pattern by being involved in the performance is also given full
permission to express the effect that a lack of physical contact with her lover brings.
This characterization of Mary Magdalene, which allows room for an individual
identification to take place between the pattern and the receiver, also creates a space
for a communal identification to take place. Precisely because of the Resurrection
encounter and Christ’s command ‘Noli me tangere’, all Brides of Christ are in the
same position of physical lack and loss. Mary Magdalene’s physical relationship
with Christ has never been a possibility to her medieval sisters. Thus the play allows
the Brides of Christ at Origny to move from fervent individualism to corporeal and
corporate awareness of their state.
The act of performance provides a moment of celebration of individual and com-
munal faith. Whether watching or acting, the play becomes a vehicle for the expres-
sion of both an individual writer/actress’s realization of a personal vision of the
Bride of Christ role, as well as a communal affirmation of its image of a collective
Bride. The annunciation of the resurrection message by Christ to a female group
underlines this; and, further, it is the women who are to tell their brothers the gospel
news: the Bride of Christ is the bearer of the message of new life and rebirth, indi-
vidually and communally. In the Ludus, however, the message is to be delivered by
women to a specifically male audience, and its dissemination implies mobility and
an active role for the Bride of Christ within the bounds of her claustration.

15
Yoshikawa, ‘The Bride of Christ’, p. 46.
78 KATE MATTHEWS

If the content of the play itself offers possibilities for expanding the circle of
influence beyond the walls of a single convent, another reason for its adaptability to
different convent usage might be found in the fact that this Ludus Paschalis could be
performed as an individual play, distinct from a strictly liturgical context. It is clearly
designed for performance within a church, and the presence of the choir and the priests
at the start suggests a service. It also suggests that the dramatic space is being
specifically censed for performance, and the choir is there as a dramatic device. The
fact that the piece starts with a formal procession suggests that the play was either
performed apart from a liturgical context or performed at the beginning of a service.
This latter possibility seems unlikely, given the positioning of other Easter plays after
the third nocturne of Matins on Easter Day, although an exception to this may be found
in the Visitatio from Sainte-Croix, which appears to have been performed after Lauds.
The suggestion that the Origny Ludus Paschalis was designed to be separate from
liturgical usage is also borne out by the presence of a highly developed Visitatio
Sepulchri within its Easter Day liturgy. The Ludus Paschalis could be adapted by
any convent community given its non-specific usage, unlike the Visitatio, which
gives details of the physical performance space at Origny. Confusions about the text
of the Visitatio abound, due to problematic manuscript sources and unclear scholar-
ship (which will be examined in a moment), but the following description of the
Visitatio at Origny is the most detailed version to be found in the manuscripts.16
There are many similarities between this text and that from Barking Abbey, but the
status of the Origny Visitatio as a dramatic performance is implied by the opening
statement that ‘doit on faire les Maries le nuit de Paques entre le derrain respons et le
Te Deum laudamus’. Coussemaker interprets this to mean the Visitatio can be treated
as the stage directions for the Ludus Paschalis,17 but the liturgical sequence of the
Visitatio, its timing, and its detailed stage directions clearly suggest that it is a sepa-
rate performance text.
During the course of the last nocturne of Matins the three nuns chosen to play the
parts of the three Marys dress in their white chemises and cloaks, and their hoods
without veils, in front of the altar dedicated to Mary Magdalene. During the canticles
of Matins they go to the Abbess and each must, with ‘willingness and propriety’, say
their confessions and be absolved by her. The Marys then return to the Magdalene
altar and remain there in prayer until the point that they must go to the sepulchre. A
priest carrying holy vessels and young women (presumably other nuns) holding four
candelabras and a censer then approach the Magdalene altar. When the last response
has been chanted, the three Marys each take a vessel wrapped in a veil that has been
blessed and go through the choir and along the aisles of the nave and stop at the
place of the sepulchre. Two candelabras are carried before them and two behind
them. The priest must re-dress himself in his alb during the last response and appear

16
Wright, Dissemination of the Liturgical Drama, pp. 185–86.
17
Coussemaker, ‘Ludus Paschalis from Origny-Sainte-Benoîte’, p. 340.
Textual Spaces / Playing Places 79

at the sepulchre before the Marys. When they reach the sepulchre, they sing in a low,
disturbed voice ‘Quis revolvet?’, to which the priest playing the angel replies, also in
a low voice, ‘Quem queritis?’. The three Marys reply in a slightly louder voice
‘Jhesum Nazarenum’, to which the priest responds in a loud voice ‘Non est hic’. The
Marys then enter the sepulchre with the two women who carry the candelabras in
front of them, and they go to the altar inside the sepulchre and kiss it and place their
vessels on it. Then they turn to the shroud in which the Lord was laid and say their
prayers there. Meanwhile, the priest outside the sepulchre sings the Te Deum. And
when the Marys have said their prayers, they must take one of the linen sheets that
had been crossed over the shroud and carry it out of the sepulchre to where the
convent is assembled and chant ‘Surrexit Dominus’. When they have finished, the
Abbess begins the Te Deum again, and the three Marys place the linen sheet on the
high altar. The priest then chants the antiphon ‘Dicant nunc Judei’ from the throne
where the relics are normally kept and reads the gospel. The three Marys leave and
the ‘good people’ come to kiss the relics, which are listed as ‘li Crois que saint Eloi
fist; et les cheviaus de le Magdelainne et un autre saintuaire qui est ensi comme une
lanterne’.18 This moment of participation positions the audience as the people of
Judea, the next historical recipients of the gospel message.
Several points in this Visitatio are worth noting. Firstly, the liturgical text of the
Easter story is pared down to its barest minimum, requiring only four actors, only
one of whom is male, perhaps demonstrating Origny’s independence from the male
clergy, a point that is further highlighted by the Abbess’s involvement in both the
public and private moments of this drama. The fact that it is young women (possibly
the novices) who carry the accoutrements of the liturgy rather than deacons or sub-
deacons also suggests a high degree of female ownership and participation in the
rituals of the Easter feast.
Secondly, despite the minimal text, the actions are highly symbolic, and several of
them take place out of sight of the audience: the preparation of the Marys and the
actions inside the sepulchre. The Magdalene altar was presumably on the north side
of the choir and possibly directly accessible from the cloister.
Thirdly, the importance of this brief drama is obviously such that a large sepul-
chre was constructed, large enough to hold at least five or six people with a separate
altar, and was either a permanent edifice in the church at Origny or a special chapel
designed specifically for use at Easter. The stage directions imply that this was situ-
ated outside the choir, further down the nave.
Fourthly, this drama took place in front of a lay audience, and was designed to
display the wealth and status of the Abbey through its relics, to which the ‘good
people’ of the surrounding area, presumably the rich and the powerful who were
generous to the Abbey, were required to pay homage. This fulfilled the function of
boosting the status of those who did kiss the relics, at the same time as confirming

18
Coussemaker, ‘Ludus Paschalis from Origny-Sainte-Benoîte’, p. 341.
80 KATE MATTHEWS

the power of the Abbey as holders of such relics. The relics are also symbolic in
themselves: the empty Cross, the lantern signifying the light of the world, and the
lock of hair of Christ’s beloved.
The public nature of this performance may have been the festive highlight of all
the dramatic activity at Origny in the course of a year, but it is also a prelude to a
further few days of private celebrations. A unique example of this is found in
Coussemaker’s version of the Visitatio, which gives the details of the services of the
week following Easter: ‘Le diemainche, le jour de Paques, le lundi et le mardi, le
mercredi que on doit aler ou sepucre aprés vespres de Nostre-Dame et chanter:
Christus resurgens. Trois dames doivent chanter: Dicant nunc; et celle qui fait Deus
doit dire le colloite Repelle.’19 Unfortunately, Coussemaker gives no other clue as to
why God is represented here in particular, let alone by a Bride of Christ, and there
seems to be no cross-reference to any other occasion within the usage of the
Abbey.20 Nonetheless, it is a startling hint that dramatic representation was carried
out by the nuns on days other than principal feast days, and presumably at less public
occasions, since there would seem to be no reason for a lay audience to be at Vespers
on the Wednesday after Easter, for example. But it is the fact that it is a woman who
represents God that is the most unusual fact, and this again might point to a certain
independence from clerical intervention in the convent’s eyes.21 It also provides a
unique example of the symbiotic relationship in medieval drama between liturgical
and non-liturgical dramatic characterization.
However, the Elevatio Hostae that Coussemaker cites before the Visitatio text22
and the Deposito and Elevatio, texts that are found in Bibliothèque de Saint-Quentin,
MS 86 and cited by Young,23 demonstrate that the Abbey boasted enough affiliated
male clergy to conduct these Easter rituals with appropriate pomp, and the texts in
Young give no sign of any female involvement in the ceremonial. In Coussemaker’s
far more detailed Elevatio two women carry the candelabras in the procession that
elevates the host to the High Altar, alongside the stipulated presence of deacons and
sub-deacons in the rubrics.
The increased female involvement in some of the Abbey’s rituals and not in
others may reflect the differences in the extant manuscripts from Origny. There are
two, possibly three, extant texts of the Livre de Trésorerie d’Origny-Sainte-Benoîte.
The first is Saint-Quentin MS 86; the other is MS 78 B 16 from the Kupferstichkabi-
nett des Staatliche Museen in Berlin (now lost). Wright thought that this second

19
Coussemker, ‘Ludus Paschalis from Origny-Sainte-Benoîte’, pp. 339–42.
20
I have been unable to gain access to Saint-Quentin MS 86 to check this, or to examine
what picture of the community at Origny is revealed in the Livre de Trésorerie.
21
Again, due to lack of access to Saint-Quentin MS 86 I am unable to speculate further.
22
Coussemaker, ‘Ludus Paschalis from Origny-Sainte-Benoîte’, pp. 339–40.
23
Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, I, 684–85.
Textual Spaces / Playing Places 81

manuscript is that used by Coussemaker,24 but Wright’s and Coussemaker’s tran-

scriptions of the Visitatio contain substantial differences, and Coussemaker’s source
has never been fully confirmed, which may mean that there was a third manuscript,
extant at the time Coussemaker wrote, which has since been lost. Robert Marichal
gives the most convincing examination of the intricate relationships between these
manuscripts, and it is his analysis that is summarized here.25
Marichal considers that the Berlin manuscript is a year older than the Saint-
Quentin manuscript, having been started in 1312 and finished in 1314. His evidence
for this is that the Berlin manuscript calendar does not start until 1314, but that it
also has the note: ‘Heluis d’Escoufflans, nonain de ceste eglise, fist escrivre ce livre
qui fut encommenciez l’an de grace mil. III.C et XII, le samedi devant le Saint
Clement (23 novembre).’26 The Berlin manuscript is ten pages shorter than the Saint-
Quentin manuscript and also contains miniatures which correspond to the different
sections of the treasury. Marichal suggests that the miniatures were there to show to
pilgrims who visited the famous relics at the Abbey, preserved in the ‘Trone’ behind
the High Altar and in the ‘aumaires’ in the choir. At Origny, care of the relics was
placed in the hands of the Treasurer, and Marichal concludes that Heluis de Coufflans
was the Treasurer who compiled the book, on the one hand to show the history of the
Abbey to pilgrims (so we find a miniature of the destruction of the Abbey facing one
of its reconstruction), and on the other hand to record the ceremonial usage and
stories behind the relics for her successor.27 If this is the case, it is a very clear
example of an individual directly affecting the public representation of her commu-
nity through the use of verbal and visual culture.
The Saint-Quentin manuscript is not a direct copy of the Berlin manuscript since,
as we have seen above, the text of the Visitatio has been greatly altered and more
detail has been given, perhaps because the instructions in the older manuscript were
unclear. The Saint-Quentin manuscript can be dated only a few years later than the
Berlin manuscript since ‘du tampz que li ditte Yzabiaus d’Asci fu esluite pour estre
abbeesse dusques au jour que cis livres fu escris avoit esté trente ans abbeesse’,28 and
Coussemaker cites the passage from the Saint-Quentin manuscript which clearly
states that Heluis de Coufflans, who made the book, lived during the time of the
election of Isabel d’Assy in 1286. She therefore started writing the Saint-Quentin
manuscript in 1316–17.29
It seems clear from Marichal’s observations that Heluis de Coufflans was the
compiler of the Berlin manuscript and of most of the Saint-Quentin manuscript.

24
Wright, Dissemination of the Liturgical Drama, p. 184.
25
Marichal, Le Théâtre en France au Moyen Age, pp. 37–45.
26
Marichal, Le Théâtre en France au Moyen Age, p. 43.
27
Marichal, Le Théâtre en France au Moyen Age, p. 42.
28
Marichal, Le Théâtre en France au Moyen Age, p. 40.
29
Coussemaker, ‘Ludus Paschalis from Origny-Sainte-Benoîte’, p. 338.
82 KATE MATTHEWS

Significantly, for our purposes, he considers the text and music of the Ludus
Paschalis as an interpolation.
Marichal gives three principal reasons for stating that the Ludus Paschalis was
not part of the Abbey’s ceremonies in 1317 and was copied after that date into the
Trésorerie. All three reasons are based on his assertion that the play is non-specific
in its detail and gives no hint of being written at or performed at Origny, unlike the
extreme specificity of the Visitatio.30 Firstly, he argues that the Marys carry boxes in
their hands, not relics, and that, after the second invention of the relics of St Benoîte
in 1231, relics played such a big role in the liturgical life of the Abbey that they
would not be left out.31 Secondly, the sepulchre in the play seems to be just a tomb
with a veil over it, which is discovered by angels sitting at its head and feet, whereas
at Origny the sepulchre was a permanent edifice, a sort of chapel, closed by a door,
into which five or six people could enter, and which also contained an altar. Lastly,
he states that in general the costumes and particulars of the mise en scène of the
Ludus Paschalis are imperfectly adapted to Origny. He also argues that the musical
notation of neumes used for part of the score does not necessarily mean that the text
was old and in use, but that this notation could have been favoured by the scribe over
the more modern fourteenth-century square notation, in which the piece was
finished. Marichal sees Heluis as a writer attached to detailed descriptions and
methodical recording of costumes and practices who would not have left out of the
Trésorerie another Easter ceremony in which she took part and would have written
about it with the same detail. It is therefore entirely possible that Heluis and Abbess
Isabel d’Assy composed the Visitatio performance particulars themselves, and
Marichal does admit the possibility that the Ludus Paschalis may have been in use
for years and that Abbess d’Assy decided customs should change and it should be
left out; but since he cannot confirm or deny this assertion, he chooses to conclude
that the Ludus Paschalis was written after 1317.
However, Marichal does not take into account the similarities between the Origny
text and that of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers or Notre-Dame-aux-Nonnains in Troyes. The
Visitatio at Poitiers that uses parts of the Ludus Paschalis is found in a thirteenth-

30
Marichal, Le Théâtre en France au Moyen Age, p. 44.
31
Benoîte was the daughter of a fourth-century Roman senator who, once she had con-
verted to Christianity, set out on a missionary expedition to convert the Gauls. She came to
preach at Aurigniacum (Origny), a military post overlooking the passage of the Oise, and died
as a martyr on 8 October 362, only a month after her arrival. The place where she was buried
was lost, but found on 26 May 662, in the place that became the church of Mont-d’Origny.
The bones were put into a casket along with a small bell that she had used to call her followers
to confession and the axe that killed her. In 1235 by order of Abbess Emmeline de Mauny, a
second coffin was made, decorated with statues of the Virgin and St Benoîte, the twelve
apostles, and the story of St Benoîte’s martyrdom. The coffin is also marked by the coats of
arms of the two Abbesses who oversaw the restoration of Saint-Benoîte, those of Catherine de
Montluc and Hélène de Sabran.
Textual Spaces / Playing Places 83

century Ordinary, implying that, if the Ludus Paschalis came via Origny32 to the
other two convents, it was being played before Isabel d’Assy was Abbess. Yet it
might also be true that the Ludus Paschalis did not originate at Origny, since both
the Sainte-Croix and Notre-Dame plays seem to be highly condensed forms of the
Origny text. It is therefore possible that fragments arrived at Origny after 1317 and
were written into a full play there in the fourteenth century.
It does seem reasonable to conclude that the Ludus Paschalis was not played at
Origny during the period when Heluis de Coufflans was treasurer, since her style
informs the Livre de Trésorerie. This is not strong enough evidence to assert that it
was never played at Origny. On the evidence from the Sainte-Croix Ordinary it
seems most unlikely that it was a fourteenth-century addition to the Trésorerie, and
if, according to Marichal, its French seems to be that of the north or the east, the play
must have come from outside Origny and so could not have been written there after
1317. Whoever the writer was, and it is not certain that it could not be a nun from
another convent, they employed a number of literary forms: in Latin, prose distichs
and lines of fifteen syllables; in French, lines of eight and ten syllables and stanzas
of varied arrangements.33
As we have seen above, the play is clearly designed for convent use, and in its
more feminine and non-liturgical spirit expands the potential personal and emotional
impact of the Easter story far beyond the Visitatio’s range. In other words, the Visi-
tatio may have been performed as the formal annunciation of the Resurrection to the
assembled clergy and laity by the convent during Matins on Easter morning, but the
Ludus Paschalis was performed separately, perhaps just to the audience of nuns, as
an aid to their personal meditation and devotion over the Easter season. In particular,
the characterization of Mary Magdalene makes this play particularly applicable to
Brides of Christ. The script could easily be adapted to any number of performance
locations and need not be specific to Origny, particularly if the text arrived from
outside the convent. Marichal’s objections about the different design of sepulchre
also need not be a problem, since the angels could sit outside the sepulchre to talk to
the Marys and open the door at the discovery moment. All that the text does show is
that it is probably not a type of prompt script that the Chantress used to direct the
singers, or, if it was, she made no further notations on the extant copy to adapt it to
Origny’s production.
One of Marichal’s points needs to be considered more closely: Origny’s depen-
dence on the relics it possessed for its fame and status, and their inclusion in every
form of ceremonial. Marichal’s argument is flawed in so far as it concerns the Ludus
Paschalis, since the attempt at narrative realism is clear in the inclusion of a
Merchant; the two Marys buying their spice boxes from him means that they would
of necessity be holding vessels not relics, and the stage directions confirm this.

32
Wright, Dissemination of the Liturgical Drama, p. 40.
33
Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, I, 420.
84 KATE MATTHEWS

Marichal underestimates the power of drama in reasoning that all of the Abbey’s
Easter practice follows the pattern of the Visitatio. Nonetheless, the acquisition of
relics does seem to have dominated the early part of the Abbey’s history34 and
undoubtedly affected the public perception of the community’s status through time.
Concerning the space of performance, little is known about the Abbey church at
Origny, and Gomart states only that the choir inside this ancient building was vast
and held two ranges of stalls, the highest for the professed nuns, the lowest occupied
by the secondary sisters. The most pertinent fact for a discussion of Convent Drama
is that the choir was separated from the nave by a grille covered with a curtain, and
Gomart states that the curtain was drawn back on feast days.35 Unfortunately,
Gomart gives no further details of the church interior, and one must presume that the
chapel of the sepulchre was outside the choir, making the Visitatio a public dramatic
event, with some moments played out in front of the grille, others behind it. This
movement about the church during the course of the Visitatio would also display the
Abbey’s relics to their best advantage, definitely making it a public piece of theatre.
It is conceivable therefore that the Ludus Paschalis could have been a more private
piece of theatre, played in the choir, using just a table-top tomb, to an audience of
nuns, clergy, and a select group of noble guests and relatives, but it is impossible to
substantiate this. The idea of private theatricals would, however, have been in keep-
ing with the slightly ‘highbrow’ image of the Abbey, and perhaps have increased its
mystique and status for those excluded from the audience. It would also have
bolstered the sense of an exclusive community for those on the inside of the grille,
and the relics would not have needed to be displayed before the community which
owned them and saw them daily on the ‘trone’ behind the High Altar in the choir.
Marichal’s various objections about the non-specific mise en scène of the Ludus
Paschalis seem to hold little weight in the above suggested scenario. In fact, it lends
greater credence to the idea that the scripts of the Ludus Paschalis and the Visitatio
Sepulchri circulated to Poitiers and to Troyes precisely because the mise en scène
was so easily adaptable. It is possible that for these three convents the performance
by women of either an extended Visitatio or the Ludus Paschalis itself became a
status symbol of the exclusive nature of the Bride of Christ’s community.36
It is clear to see, then, how the productions of a private performance of the Ludus
Paschalis and the public performance of a Visitatio at Origny-Sainte-Benoîte from
the thirteenth century onwards conform to the six central aspects of the genre of
Convent Drama outlined at the beginning of this article. Firstly, the two pieces show
a distinct shift of voice and thematic emphasis between the public and private

34
Gomart, ‘L’Abbaye d’Origny-Ste-Benoîte’, pp. 406–15.
35
Gomart, ‘L’Abbaye d’Origny-Ste-Benoîte’, p. 410.
36
This may explain, why, for example, the convent of Notre-Dame de Troyes did not
follow the example of the other monasteries of Saint-Pierre and Saint-Etienne in the diocese,
whose Easter plays are very similar (Wright, Dissemination of the Liturgical Drama, p. 14).
Textual Spaces / Playing Places 85

performances, not least in the level of participation by a lay public audience.

Secondly, we have seen the possibilities of transmission of the manuscripts to other
convents in France, and perhaps beyond, and speculated how these might have de-
veloped the forms and traditions of liturgical drama in other religious communities.
Thirdly, the texts of the Ludus and the Visitatio also demonstrate the Bride of
Christ’s awareness of her convent space and give insight into the places of perfor-
mance at Origny; spatially, then, the area behind the grille at Origny becomes both
an enclosed and selectively exposed site of performance for the Bride of Christ ideal.
Fourthly, the Ludus, in particular, reveals a fascinating preoccupation with exploring
the physical and emotional expression of a positively gendered female spirituality for
the Brides of Christ as both performers and audience members. Fifthly, the Ludus, in
its development away from the biblical narrative, strengthens the character of Mary
Magdalene and emphasizes her status as a role model for the Bride of Christ. And
finally, by examining the development of the manuscripts, it can be seen that at least
one person behind the grille at Origny in the thirteenth century must have had a
highly developed sense of what it meant to be an individual and communal Bride of
Christ, not only as a part of her community at Origny but as a part of the wider
community of Benedictine female monasticism. This was then seized upon by either
Isabel d’Assy or Heluis de Coufflans in the fourteenth century and further devel-
oped. Convent Drama at Origny provided the vehicle to transmit both the public and
private reception of the Bride of Christ role, and to heighten and strengthen the status
of the Abbey as a prestigious centre of female spirituality and theatrical invention.

Royal Holloway College, University of London