University of Virginia Library

NOTE.

“The early Christian Apologists anathematised the Greek mysteries, but no sooner did Christianity become the faith of the civilised world than—as Mr. Maccoll has pointed out— attempts were made to vivify the faith of the early converts, and enlist new proselytes by means of dramatic representations. Hence sprung up the Mystery and Miracle Plays, and the ‘Moralities,’ which for ages nurtured the piety and instructed the minds of the rude people to whom books could not speak, and in whose ears the sermons of the Churchmen were but the windy ethics of the Schools. Wyckliffe and his followers launched fulminations against them. But Martin Luther, whose robust mind saw in them an effective aid to his propaganda, gave them his sanction, on the ground that ‘such spectacles often do more good and produce more impression than sermons.’ Hence, throughout Sweden and Denmark they were long popular; and even up to the close of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, when Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. often witnessed them, they flourished in England. To this day their influence may be seen in the Cornish acting of ‘St. George and the Dragon’ and ‘Beelzebub.’”