Lazarus’s Vision of Hell: A Significant Passage in Late-Medieval Passion Plays

Summary

On the European passion stages of the late Middle Ages, Lazarus's report from hell, an apocryphal story, was undoubtedly meaningful for theatergoers, who were constantly enlarging their own geographical universe and, hence, would have been interested in hearing an explicit description of the netherworld by someone who had been resurrected miraculously. For spectators led to visualize tortures and unhappiness, Lazarus's report (paralleled later by Christ's own suffering) made Jesus’ death and the redemption of the damned souls urgent; to avoid these punishments meted out for a life of sin, Christians would try anything within their spiritual and material means to choose good over evil. Certainly, fifteenth-c. people knew and related to the scenes of torture: judicial torture had been used since antiquity and would outlast the late Middle Ages. In addition, people suffered wartime violence, nature-inflicted havoc unleashed by the weather, and many forms of physical abuse during their daily lives. As we shall see, Lazarus speaks of hellish conditions which resemble contemporary life experiences similarly fraught with violence.

The Lazarus episode raises significant questions about the origin and development of medieval religious drama. Despite a considerable amount of scholarship in the last eighty years, the development of the religious stage is still unclear. Editors of French passion plays and mysteries have added their insights to those of other literary critics who have taken positions on sources and influences; but many scholars affirm, at the same time, that these assertions remain tentative at least until better evidence is established. Our information concerns French theater, but many general points may be valid for other regions as well.

At this moment, some principles can be articulated, with which most critics would agree: 1) All extant passions and most mystères adhere to a basic biblical plot. 2) Most plays add to this plot, with many increases (such as Lazarus's report) occurring in the fifteenth century. 3) Medieval authors of such dramatic works do not necessarily copy from one another, since each writer or fatiste is separated from the next in space and time; also, these works quickly become public property and are changed in the hands of producers to suit local requirements and possibilities of staging; thus, a dramatist writing fifty years after his predecessor may have a livret version in front of him which had changed considerably since its genesis.