Ordinalia
Three late fourteenth-century Cornish mystery plays.
The Ordinalia, meaning "prompt" or "service book," is a set of three late fourteenth-century mystery plays. Written mostly in Middle Cornish with Latin stage directions, they are the Origo Mundi, Passio Christi, and Resurrexio Domini.
Quick Facts
- Language
- Middle Cornish with Latin stage directions
- Number of plays
- 3
- First play title
- Origo Mundi
- First play line count
- 2846
- Second play title
- Passio Christi
- Second play line count
- 3242
- Third play title
- Resurrexio Domini
- Third play line count
- 2646
Facts from the source article.
First play
Origo Mundi opens with the Creation, the Fall, and Cain and Abel, then moves to the Ark and the Flood. The temptation of Abraham closes the first act. The second act covers Moses, and the third presents David and the building of Solomon's Temple, ending with the death of Maximilla as a Christian by the temple's bishop. A later offshoot, Gwreans an Bys, was copied by William Jordan in 1611.
Second and third plays
Passio Christi depicts Christ's temptation in the desert and events from the entry into Jerusalem through the Crucifixion. It flows without break into Resurrexio Domini, which recounts the Harrowing of Hell, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the legend of St Veronica and Tiberius, Pilate's death, the release of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, and the Three Marys. These plays draw on the pseudo-Gospel of Nicodemus and other legendary sources.
Extant manuscripts
Three manuscripts survive. Bodley 791, a fifteenth-century Oxford manuscript given to the Bodleian Library by James Button on 28 March 1614, is the original from which Edwin Norris edited the plays in 1859. Bodleian MSS 28556-28557, presented by Edwin Ley around 1859, includes a translation by John Keigwin. Peniarth MS 428E, from Sir John Williams's library, also has a Keigwin translation and is now at the National Library of Wales.
More in Joseph of Arimathea
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