University of Virginia Library

I

Since much of what is to follow concerns the nature of the lost source from which Johannes was working, it is necessary to begin this study with a brief review of what is already known about the composition and transmission of the plays in Innsbruck Cod. 960. To begin with, the confusion surrounding the provenance of the plays is reflected in the long-standing uncertainty as to what they should properly be called. In the past, the plays have commonly been referred to either as the Innsbrucker Spiele or the Neustifter Spiele. Both terms are misleading. The only connection that the plays have with Innsbruck is the fact that the manuscript in which they are preserved was transferred to the university library sometime between 1809, when the monastery which had once housed it was dissolved, and 1840, when Franz Joseph Mone discovered it as an uncatalogued item in the university collection.[5] The second designation has a somewhat better claim to accuracy. It is evident that by 1445 the manuscript had come into the possession of the Augustinians at

Neustift bei Brixen, since fol. 60v contains a note in the hand of "Scribe C" describing the burial of Oswald von Wolkenstein at the writer's own monastery.[6] Nevertheless, for reasons which will be explained below, it is highly unlikely that the plays were copied down in their present form at Neustift, although there is some evidence to indicate that they may well have been performed there at a later date. Therefore, in order to avoid unnecessary confusion in discussions of the plays' provenance and influence, it seems best simply to refer to them by the titles which Johannes himself used in 1391: Ludus de assumptione beatae Mariae virginis; Ludus de resurrectione domini; and Ludus de corpore Christi.[7]

Johannes' dated explicit establishes that the Innsbruck codex was completed on September 5, 1391, and the obituary added by Scribe C confirms that the book had come to Neustift by August, 1445. But where and when were the plays actually composed? Dialectical peculiarities shared by the Easter play and the Assumption play indicate that the original home of both works is to be sought in the Henneberg region of western Thuringia, probably in the prosperous mining town of Schmalkalden.[8] In this regard, it is worth noting that according to the Heiksche Chronik, Schmalkalden boasted a rich dramatic heritage which included not only plays on Biblical subjects, but also dramatizations of the destruction of Jerusalem, that is to say, plays similar to the final episode of the Ludus de assumptione.[9] One cannot pinpoint the provenance of the Corpus Christi play with the same degree of accuracy, but dialectical evidence demonstrates that it too was composed in Thuringia, probably somewhat to the east of Schmalkalden.[10] Although it is difficult to assign a precise date to the plays, it is generally agreed that all three predate the manuscript by at least fifty years. Topical allusions to papal and imperial politics place the date of the Easter play between 1323 and 1347.[11] The Assumption play, which may be slightly older than the Easter

play, also dates from the second quarter of the fourteenth century, while the Corpus Christi play may have been composed as early as 1314-1320.[12]

There can be little doubt that the plays were intended for performance. The narrow half-folio format of the leaves, the rough manner in which the book has been handled, and the presence of red marginalia and underlining to indicate role assignments and stage directions all suggest that the manuscript may have been used as a director's script sometime after 1391.[13] But were the plays actually staged at Neustift? Until recently, it was simply taken for granted that the manuscript was the work of one of the brothers at Neustift and that the plays must have been performed within the walls of the monastery itself. However, the only tangible evidence connecting any of the three plays with the monastery is a late note in the hand of Scribe C (fol. 50v), which recommends the Corpus Christi play for performance and suggests when and by whom it should be staged: "Incipit ludus utilis pro devocione simplicium intimandus et peragendus die corporis Christi vel infra octavas de fide katholica. Sumentur persone litterate et apte et sic de aliis." A second argument for performance at Neustift can be made on the grounds of the commonsense supposition that the monks of that house would not have bothered to acquire and preserve such a copious playbook out of sheer antiquarian curiosity, but rather must have intended to use it at least as a model for theatrical productions of their own. Finally, the play with which the manuscript begins, the Ludus de assumptione beatae Mariae virginis, seems to be particularly appropriate for performance at Neustift. The central action of the play, the death and assumption of the Virgin, preserves much of the formality and musical complexity of the liturgical observances upon which it is based. What is more, the church at Neustift annually commemorated the dedication of its sanctuary on August 15, the feast of the Assumption.[14]

Nevertheless, recent studies have cautioned against the facile acceptance of the notion that all three plays were performed at Neustift around 1391, and that the monastery thus represents the source of the great flowering of Tirolian drama in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.[15] With the possible exception of a Latin Visitatio Sepulchri (Innsbruck Universitätsbibliothek MS. 610, fols. 182v-183r) which has tentatively been associated with the monastery,[16] an intensive search has failed to uncover any evidence proving that religious dramas were ever staged at Neustift, much less a vernacular play of the magnitude of the Ludus de assumptione beatae Mariae virginis, a 3200-line music drama which required a cast of nearly fifty well-schooled performers and took no less than two days to perform.[17]

Even if Innsbruck Cod. 960 were in Neustift in 1445, the further hypothesis that the scribe who copied the plays from a Thuringian source more than half a century earlier was also a brother of the same house is, as Barbara Thoran has emphasized, "kühn und gänzlich unbewiesen" (p. 361). Indeed, since the extant texts show no signs of Tirolian dialectical influence, one ought rather to assume that the manuscript did not arrive in Neustift until after 1391.[18] Hans Moser (pp. 183-184) argues that the finished playbook was probably obtained by the Augustinians at Neustift much closer to 1445 than to the actual date of its production in 1391, and that it therefore came to the region far too late to affect the local dramatic traditions which were already well established in Hall, Sterzing, and other neighboring towns. Likewise, neither Thoran (pp. 362-377) nor Moser (pp. 180-183) is able to detect any definite traces of the 1391 text of the Ludus de resurrectione domini in later versions of the Tiroler Passionsspiel, thus refuting the widely held notion that performances at Neustift profoundly influenced the development of the Tirolian dramatic tradition. If the plays were staged at Neustift at all, Moser (pp. 184-186) suggests that the extant manuscript would have been used only as a model from which revised acting scripts would have been rewritten in a more familiar dialectical form. For these reasons, it seems best to think about all three plays in terms of their original home in early fourteenth-century Thuringia, rather than as examples of fifteenth-century Tirolian

monastic drama. Accordingly, the task of the present study is to consider the technique and work habits of the scribe Johannes in order to learn as much as possible about the history of the plays before their inclusion in the extant Innsbruck codex.