Re-membering the Jews: theatrical violence in the N-Town Marian plays

Comparative Drama, Winter, 2007 by Merrall Llewelyn Price

   Maria: Secretly they ordeyne in here conseytis felle
   When my sowle is paste, where Godis liste is,
   To brenne my body and schamly it quelle,
   For Jesu was of me born, that they slew wyth here fistis.

      (226-29)

John promises to protect her, but she is right to have been concerned: three Jewish high priests or princes conspire to attack the bier during her procession. Thanks to divine intervention, two of the priests find themselves helpless to act, but their leader is less easily dissuaded:

   Primus Princeps: A, cowardis, vpon you now fy!
   Are ye ferd of a ded body?
   I schal sterte therto manly;
   Alle that company fere I ryth nouth!

      (419-22)

Here the first priest rashly attacks the bier in an attempt to upset it, only to find his hands firmly affixed to it, and, in a visual though comic reminder of the painful death of Jesus, the rest of his body hangs agonizingly from them:

   Allas, my body is ful of peyne!
   I am fastened sore to this bere!
   Myn handys are ser bothe tweyne.
   O, Peter, now prey thy God for me here.

      (423-26)

Peter tells him to believe in Jesus and Mary. He says that he does believe in Jesus, but obstinately elides the topic of Mary, and Peter tells him sternly that he must honor Mary's body. When he agrees to this, his hands are released, and he is sent to heal and convert other Jews: "Ye Jewys that langour in this gret infyrmyte / Belevyth in Crist Jesu and ye schal haue helthe" (464-65).

There are a number of apocryphal sources for this tale, the most influential being the fifth century Transitus Maria, attributed by the N-Town "Assumption" to St. John of Patmos: "That Seynt Jhon the Euangelist wrot and tauht, as I lere, / In a book clepid apocriphum" (3-4), but generally attributed to Melito of Sardis c.120-185 C.E. (8) Pseudo-Melito also references another doubting Jew; the Apostle Thomas is the only witness to Mary's corporeal assumption into heaven, and despite her gift of a girdle, the other apostles do not believe his story until they discover that her tomb is empty. Here the tables are not only satisfyingly turned on the doubting disciple, but his role as witness is particularly convincing in the light of his personal history of skepticism.

In several versions of the dormition, the offending Jew, most often named Jephonias, but sometimes Athonios or Reuben, has the rest of his body cut away from his immovable hands by an angel, but is made whole on his conversion. Medieval English versions are less likely than their counterparts to include the avenging angel, but the withering of the desecrator's hands appears in the Blickling Homily, the Cursor Mundi, the South English Legendary, and the Golden Legend, in addition to the N-Town Cycle. One of the two versions in the Golden Legend is particularly explicit in attributing the doubter's suffering to his failure to believe in Mary's virginity: after Peter insists on a statement of Christian faith, the Jew responds:

   "I believe that the Lord Jesus is truly the Son of God, and that
   this is His most holy mother!" At once his hands were loosed from
   the litter, but his arms were still shrivelled and the stark pain
   did not abate. Then said Peter, "Kiss the bier and say: I believe
   in Jesus Christ true God, whom this woman bore in her womb,
   remaining a virgin after she brought him forth." And when he
   had done this, he was at once made whole. (9)