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THE ROMAN RITE AND THE ORIGINS OF THE LITURGICAL DRAMA C. CLIFFORD FLANIGAN The liturgical drama and the cultic celebration of the liturgy are obviously closely related to each other. Yet the nature of that relation and the history that liturgy and drama share have not yet been studied in adequate detail. According to Karl Young, the relationship between the liturgy and the liturgical drama was exclusively historical and of only incidental importance ; for him The plays of the Church owe to the liturgy their very existence and they assimilated much of its piety, splendor, and commOn sense, but they were powerless to reHect its deeper beauty and its pervasive majesty." Generations of readers and scholars have seemed satisfied with this view. Despite a few largely overlooked important earlier studies,' we have only recently begun to realize the extent of our lack of knowledge about both liturgy and liturgical drama. It is now painfully apparent how much we do not know; even the traditional date for the origin of the Visitatio Sepulchri has been disputed.' More significantly, the nature and extent of the tie between ritual drama and the liturgical life of early medieval Europe have hardly been studied at all. Even where discoveries have been made and new points of view put forth, they have frequently been advanced with less than full knowledge of professional liturgical scholarship; the new scholarship, like the old, has not fully come to terms with the nature of the liturgy itself, nor has it asked how the history of the drama is affected by the liturgy out of which it grew. Clearly, as O.B. Hardison's study of the connection between rite and drama suggests, we need to examine anew the whole subject of liturgical drama. What is most needed at this stage are studies on specific and clearly delineated problems. It is essential that these studies not be narrowly literary or dramatic, but also be directed toward the whole liturgical life of medieval Europe. Where necessary, they must be carried out in c

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