lustrations were very necessary to awaken interest in moral and
spiritual teaching. They changed in accordance with the progress of the
times and country--sometimes the medium was fables or other such
impossible fictions, sometimes it was similitudes from nature, as
parables, and sometimes dramatic performances. Whatever drama the Jews
had was of a religious character. It is supposed by some that the
words--"When your children shall say unto you, 'What mean ye by this
service,'" refers to some commemorative representation. However this may
be, we know that about the year 100 B.C., Ezekiel, an Alexandrian Jew,
wrote a play in Greek on the Exodus, which somewhat resembled a
"mystery." Luther thought that the books of Judith and Tobit were
originally in a dramatic form; and, even among the Jews, a comic element
was sometimes introduced--as in the ancient Ahasuerus' play at the feast
of Purim--with a view of attracting attention at a time when people had
little reflection, and were not very particular about the intermingling
of utterly incongruous feelings, whether religion and cruelty, or
religion and humour.

We have traced the gradual decline of the drama in Rome, until it
consisted but of buffooneries and mimes; and so its revival in modern
times commenced with performances in dumb show, the low intellectual
character of the age being reflected in popular exhibitions. The mimi
were people who performed barefooted, clothed in skins of animals,
with shaven heads, and faces smeared with soot. The Italians gradually
came to relish nothing but a sort of pantomime, and it seems to have
occurred to the Roman Church, always enterprising and fond of
adaptation, that they might turn this taste of the people to some
account. Accordingly, we read of religious mummings in Spain as early as
the sixth century, and in 1264 the Brotherhood of the Gonfalone was
founded in Italy to represent the sufferings of Christ in dumb show and
processions.[48] In France the performance of holy plays, termed
Mysteries, dates from the conclusion of the fourteenth century, when a
company of pilgrims from the Holy Land, with their gowns hung with
scallop shells and images, assisted at the marriage of Charles VI. and
Isabella of Bavaria. They were incorporated as a Society in Paris to
give dramatic entertainments, and were known as the "Fraternity of the
Passion." Originally the intention was to represent scenes in Scripture
history, but gradually they i