Mysteries and Miracle-plays were dramas founded on the historical parts of the Old and New Testaments, and the lives of the saints, performed during the middle ages, first in churches, and afterwards in the streets on fixed or movable stages. Mysteries were properly taken from biblical and miracle-plays from legendary subjects, but this distinction in nomenclature was not always strictly adhered to. We have an extant specimen of the religious play of a date prior to the beginning of the middle ages in the Christos Paschön, assigned, somewhat questionably, to Gregory Nazianzen, and written in 4th-century Greek. Next come six Latin plays on subjects connected with the lives of the saints, by Hroswitha (c. 920–968), a nun of Gandersheim, in Saxony, which, though not very artistically constructed, possess considerable dramatic power and interest; they were discovered by Konrad Celtes and by him first published in 1501 at Nuremberg. The performers were at first the clergy and choristers; afterwards any layman might participate. The earliest record of the performance of a miracle-play in England is found in Matthew Paris, who relates that Geoffrey, afterwards Abbot of St Albans, while a secular, exhibited at Dunstable in 1110 the miracle-play of St Catherine, and borrowed copies from St Albans to dress his characters. Fitzstephen, in his Life of Thomas à Becket (1183), describes with approval the representation in London of the sufferings of the saints and miracles of the confessors. On the establishment of the Corpus Christi festival by Pope Urban IV. in 1264, miracle-plays became one of its adjuncts, and every considerable town had a fraternity for their performance. Throughout the 15th and following centuries they continued in full force in England, and are mentioned, sometimes approvingly, sometimes disapprovingly, by contemporary writers. Designed at first as a means of religious instruction for the people, they had long before the Reformation so far departed from their original character as to be mixed up in many instances with buffoonery and irreverence, intentional or unintentional, and to be the means of inducing contempt rather than respect for the church and religion. An example of the degradation of the Mysteries may be seen in the folk-book of Till Eulenspiegel (q.v.). They lingered on after the Reformation, the mystery-play of The Three Kings of Cologne being performed at Newcastle so late even as 1599. Remarkable collections exist of English mysteries and miracles of the 15th century, known as the Towneley Mysteries (Surtees Soc. 1836), the Coventry Mysteries (Shakespeare Soc. 1841), the Chester Plays (Shakespeare Soc. 1843), and the York Plays (Clar. Press, 1885).
Out of the mysteries and miracle-plays sprang a third class of religious plays, called Moralities, in which allegorical personifications of the Virtues and Vices were introduced as dramatis personæ. These personages at first took part in the play along with the scriptural or legendary characters, but afterwards entirely superseded them. The oldest known English compositions of this kind are of the time of Henry VI.; they are more elaborate and less interesting than the miracle-plays. Moralities continued in fashion till Elizabeth's time, and were the immediate precursors of the regular drama.
Miracle-plays and mysteries were as popular in France, Germany, Spain, and Italy as in England; and indeed some of the pastorales still acted among the Basques (q.v.) are mere survivals. A piece of the kind yet extant, composed in France in the 11th century, is entitled the Mystery of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, written partly in Provençal, partly in Latin. A celebrated fraternity, the Confrérie de la Passion, founded in Paris in 1350, had a monopoly for the performance of mysteries and miracle-plays, the exhibition of each of which took several days. Many of these are still extant.
It is a mistake to suppose that the hostility of the Reformers was what suppressed these exhibitions. The fathers of the Reformation showed no unfriendly feeling towards them. Luther is reported to have said that they often did more good and produced more impression than sermons; and Bishop Bale's Brefe Comedy of Johan Baptyste (1538) is an onslaught on the friars. The most direct encouragement was given to such plays by the founders of the Swedish Protestant Church, and by the earlier Lutheran bishops, Swedish and Danish. The authorship of one drama of the kind is assigned to Grotius. In England the greatest check they received was from the rise of the secular drama; yet they continued to be occasionally performed in the times of James I. and Charles I., and it is well known that the first sketch of Milton's Paradise Lost was a sacred drama, where the opening speech was Satan's Address to the Sun.
A degenerate relic of the miracle-play may yet be traced in some remote districts of England, where the story of St George, the dragon, and Beelzebub is rudely represented by the peasantry. Strange to say, it was in the Catholic south of Germany, where these miracle-plays and mysteries had preserved most of their old religious character, that the severest blow was levelled against them. In 1779 a manifesto was issued by the Prince-archbishop of Salzburg, condemning them, and prohibiting their performance, on the ground of their ludicrous mixture of the sacred and the profane, the frequent bad acting in the serious parts, the distraction of the lower orders from more edifying modes of instruction, and the scandal arising from the exposure of sacred subjects to the ridicule of freethinkers. This ecclesiastical denunciation was followed by vigorous measures on the part of the civil authorities in Austria and Bavaria. One exception was made to the general suppression. In 1633 the villagers of Oberammergau (q.v.), in the Bavarian highlands, on the cessation of a plague which desolated the surrounding country, had vowed to perform every tenth year the Passion of Our Saviour, out of gratitude, and as a means of religious instruction; a vow which had ever since been regularly observed. The pleading of a deputation of Ammergau peasants with Maximilian of Bavaria saved their mystery from the general condemnation, on condition of everything that could offend good taste being expunged. It was then and afterwards somewhat remodelled, and is perhaps the only mystery or miracle-play which has survived to the present day—taking place every ten years (1870, 1880, 1890, &c.). The inhabitants of this secluded village, long noted for their skill in carving in wood and ivory, have a rare union of artistic cultivation with perfect simplicity. Their familiarity with sacred subjects is even beyond what is usual in the alpine part of Germany, and the spectacle seems still to be looked on with feelings much like those with which it was originally conceived. What would elsewhere appear impious, is to the alpine peasants devout and edifying. The personator of Christ considers his part an act of religious worship; he and the other principal performers are said to be selected for their holy life, and consecrated to their work with prayer. The players, about 500 in number, are exclusively the villagers, who, though they have no artistic instruction except from the parish priest, act their parts with no little dramatic power, and a delicate appreciation of character. The New Testament narrative is strictly adhered to, the only legendary addition to it being the St Veronica handkerchief. The acts alternate with tableaux from the Old Testament and choral odes. Many thousands of the peasantry are attracted by the spectacle from all parts of the Tyrol and Bavaria, among whom the same devout demeanour prevails as among the performers. Plays of a humbler description, from subjects in legendary or sacred history, are not unfrequently got up by the villagers around Innsbruck, which show a certain rude dramatic talent.
See Leroy's Études sur les Mystères (1837); Monmerqué and Michel, Théâtre François au moyen âge, 12e-14e Siècles (1839); Mone, Schauspiele des Mittelalters (1846); A. d'Ancona, Sacre rappresentazione dei Secoli 14-16 (Flor. 3 vols. 1872); Sepet, Le Drame Chrétien au moyen âge (1878); Petit de Julleville, Histoire du Théâtre en France (2 vols. 1880); Miracle-plays, by K. Hase, trans. by Jackson (1880); A. W. Pollard, English Miracle-plays, Moralities, and Interludes (1890); the classified list of References for Students of Miracle-plays and Mysteries, by Francis H. Stoddard (Berkeley, U.S. 1887); and, for the passion-play at Oberammergau, works by Seguin, Tweedie, Farrar, and others.