The Vengeance of Our Lord: Medieval Dramatizations of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Stephen K. Wright (review)

Reviews191 of culture" concept that revitalized so many cities in a remarkable twentyyear period. Similarly, I wanted Chapter 5 to touch upon the Vieux Colombier. This is not to judge the book unfairly by an impossible goal of comprehensiveness, but rather to acknowledge its yeoman service in opening up a field of study that will surely stimulate other investigations. Indeed, the best hope might be for a Places of Performance II from Marvin Carlson. University of Missouri-Kansas City FELICIA HARDISON LONDRÊ Stephen K. Wright. The Vengeance of Our Lord: Medieval Dramatizations of the Destruction of Jerusalem. Studies and Texts, 89. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1989. Pp. ? + 233 + 3 microfiches (782 frames). $29.00. Professor Wright has pulled off an impressive double: a richly comparatiste literary study of dramatizations of a well-known medieval legend in five different languages coupled with an enlightening analysis of the texts, contexts, and performances of a little known and unjustly neglected group of plays. After a preliminary chapter describing the elements and sources of the Vengeance legends (a translation of the Latin quotations would be helpful) and the real moral problem the theme posed for Christian writers, Professor Wright studies in detail each of the medieval texts with special reference to the playwrights' solutions to this problem. In the oldest play, the fourteenth-century German Ludus de assumption beatae Mariae virginis from Thuringia, the destruction of Jerusalem is seen exceptionally as being the inevitable result of the Jews' resistance to the Apostolic Mission rather than as vengeance for the Crucifixion. The fragmentary Gothaer Botenrolle, which comprises stage directions and speeches for the messenger (Boten) Otteber, provides fascinating glimpses of a large-scale two-day play in which the fate of Jerusalem is paralleled by the sack of Rome by Titus and Vespasian and the death of the tyrant Nero, executioner of the apostles Peter and Paul, as well as a warning of the fate that may befall the third city, that in which the play is being given. Quite different in approach is the early fifteenth-century French play of the Vengeance Jésus-Christ by Eustace Marcadé with its enlarged printed version which ran through seven Paris editions between 1491 and 1539. Unable to effect a reconciliation between the Christian ideal of self-effacing suffering and the "secular military ethos of heroism and personal glory," Marcadé attempts to give equal weight to both viewpoints and achieves "a final and perhaps ultimately failed effort to assert the aspirations of medieval Christian chivalry" (p. 148). For each of the texts Professor Wright also provides a meticulous analysis of manuscripts , location, author, content, and form as well as performance modes. In the section on Marcadé's Vengeance this is supplemented by a study of the probable links with the Burgundian ducal patrons and a study of the manuscript illuminations as an aid in reconstructing the perform- 192Comparative Drama anee. A retrospective chapter also gives details of sixteenth-century dramatizations of the Vengeance theme in Spain, Italy, and England. The study is enriched by numerous footnotes and an extensive bibliography , which would be easier to use if the anonymous play-texts were listed, as is customary, under titles, not under the editors' names. Since neither German nor French plays are available in easily accessible editions, microfiches of the texts used are supplied with the book. In such a rich and wide-ranging study some errors and omissions are inevitable: it was Peter who was crucified upside down, not Paul, who was beheaded (p. 94); the list of related texts and plays should have included the Veronica play from the third day of the Cornish Ordinalia; on the historical side more use could have been made of the French saint plays, especially those of St. Louis in considering the physical and psychological portrayal of violence on the stage; a more serious omission is the unexplained and inexplicable absence of the stage plan and miniatures in the manuscripts of the Valenciennes twenty-fiveday play from the discussion of the relationship between art and drama. In the Bibliography, Joanna Dutka should read JoAnna Dutka. LYNETTE R. MUIR University of Leeds ...