m the celebrated series
of the Seven Joys of Maria--of which the first is the Annunciation and
the seventh the Ascension. To about the same date belongs the small
group of the so-called _abele spelen_ (as who should say plays easily
managed), chiefly on chivalrous themes. Though allegorical figures are
already to be found in the Netherlands miracles of Mary, the species of
the moralities was specially cultivated during the great Burgundian
period of this century by the chambers or lodges of the _Rederijkers_
(rhetoricians)--the well-known civic associations which devoted
themselves to the cultivation of learned poetry and took an active share
in the festivals that formed one of the most characteristic features of
the life of the Low Countries. Among these moralities was that of
_Elckerlijk_ (printed 1495 and presumably by Peter Dorlandus), which
there is good reason for regarding as the original of one of the finest
of English moralities, _Everyman_.

Italy.

In Italy the liturgical drama must have run its course as elsewhere; but
the traces of it are few, and confined to the north-east. The collective
mystery, so common in other Western countries, is in Italian literature
represented by a single example only--a _Passione di Gesu Cristo_,
performed at Revello in Saluzzo in the 15th century; though there are
some traces of other cyclic dramas of the kind. The Italian religious
plays, called _figure_ when on Old, _vangeli_ when on New, Testament
subjects, and differing from those of northern Europe chiefly by the
less degree of coarseness in their comic characters, seem largely to
have sprung out of the development of the processional element in the
festivals of the Church. Besides such processions as that of the Three
Kings at Epiphany in Milan, there were the penitential processions and
songs (_laude_), which at Assisi, Perugia and elsewhere already
contained a dramatic element; and at Siena, Florence and other centres
these again developed into the so-called (_sacre_) _rappresentazioni_,
which became the most usual name for this kind of entertainment. Such a
piece was the _San Giovanni e San Paolo_ (1489), by Lorenzo the
Magnificent--the prince who afterwards sought to reform the Italian
stage by paganizing it; another was the _Santa Teodora_, by Luigi Pulci
(d. 1487); _San Giovanni Gualberto_ (of Florence) treats the religious
experience of a latter-day saint; _Rosana e Ulimento_ is a love-story
with a Christian