Thomas and Symes have collaborated to produce an erudite, informative, and entertaining edition and translation of an important twelfth-century play, “probably the oldest extant rhymed Latin drama” (64). Symes directed Thomas's dissertation, and the project evolved from a 2013 performance at the University of Illinois wherein research informed practice that informed research. There is no indication of whether or not the performance was recorded.
Thomas is responsible for the introductory chapters and the Latin edition; Symes made the translation. The play was composed ca.1159 at the Benedictine Abbey of Tegernsee, Bavaria, and it survives most completely in a “small working codex” miscellany copied between 1176-1186 and now in Munich (65). The play is only five folia, in scripta continua, and has remarkably complete stage directions. There is also a partial witness from a manuscript at the Abbey of St. Georgenberg in Fiecht, Austria (presented in Figure 5). The plot is based on the late tenth century “Letter from Adso to Queen Gerberga Concerning the Origin and Time of the Antichrist” (27). In larger generic terms it is a Heilsgeschichte, a “holy history” (7), or more precisely a salvation history wherein the Church triumphs over false doctrine and saves the nations.
Submerged beneath the plot are the power dynamics of the investiture controversy through the allegorical contest between the characters of Gentilitas (pagans, particularly polytheistic Muslims), the King of Babylon (Islam), Synagoga (the blind Jews), Ecclesia (the Church), and the Kings of the Franks and of the Teutons. There is also a King of the Greeks (the Byzantine Emperor) and the true Emperor, modeled on Frederick Barbarossa (made King of Germany in 1152 and died in 1190 in the Third Crusade against Saladin). Apostolicus (the Pope) has a nonspeaking role. Antichrist successively deceives the secular kings and is summarily disposed of in a thunderclap (sonitus super caput antichristi [150]). Thomas claims that the play also engages with eucharistic controversies over the real presence of Christ but it is not clear where in the play those debates surface (20-21).
After a somewhat muddy discussion of theatrical meaning-making drawing upon Bertolt Brecht in Chapter One, Chapter Two makes a clearer case that the play is pro-imperial and anti-papal. It thus aligns both with Frederick's claims to power and with monastic display of “medieval media virality” (43). Monks are “[masculine]...sexually pure and wholly militarized” (38) as opposed to the “unmanly impotence” (39) of the Pope. The Bishops are on the side of the Hypocrites and of Antichrist. The performance of the play would teach monks the ars dictaminis, rhetorical arts, “to operate effectively on the court and ecclesiastical stages of Christendom” (39). Chapter Three connects rhetoric to theater and liturgy, and here liturgy means the entire monastic habitus and not just rites in a particular religious service (45). Through the performance monks would “feel and embody...the weight of its mimetic significations” (45, emphasis in original and drawing upon work published by Symes). There is also a fascinating discussion of four “borrowed liturgical elements” appearing in the script (48). The most interesting is a quotation of Psalm 88.14b (Firmetur manus tua et exaltetur dextera tua; “Strong is your right hand and high is your right hand”; see pages 108-109) spoken by the Hypocrites as they crown Antichrist. The lection appears in English coronation rituals found in benedictionals and pontificals associated with Winchester, Exeter, and Canterbury. The edition supplies color images (Figures 6 and 7) of leaves in the Anderson and Sherborne Pontificals showing the neumatic notations. Phrases familiar from monastic life and practice thus perform pseudo power and true power in the triumph of Ecclesia at the end of the play.
There have been two previous translations of the play into English, by William H. Hulme in 1925 and John Wright in 1967. Symes is responsible for this verse translation, and here there is much to praise. Rhyming Latin was a new phenomenon in the twelfth century, imitating vernacular songs and Arabic poetry. The “militant musicality” (63) of the Crusaders recalls how the first Crusade in 1099 reclaimed Jerusalem and how the eponymous Knights Templar named the Temple Mount templum domini in 1199, forty years before the play was composed. The seven seats on which the allegorical characters sit surround the Temple, a site of “transcendent eschatological significance” (71). Symes achieves a pleasing iambic meter with many ingenious rhymes: honor / emperor, dread / garlanded, world / hurl, pariah / messiah, compel / infidel (89.11-12, 89.19-20, 123.13-15, 135.24-26, 147.5-7). There are a few jarringly colloquial notes: the spurious line “we know our team's the best” to manufacture a rhyme with “rest” (109.12); the neologism “disillusionize” to rhyme with “lies” (123.4); the otiose interjection at the beginning of “well...I'm Elijah” (141.15, ellipses in original) presumably added for comic effect. There are also a few mistakes: “purist” when “purest” is meant (77.14), “who's” for “whose” (145.32) and typos elsewhere: “159” for the correct “1159” (31), “Eccesia” for “Ecclesia” (58) “gneris” for “generis” (134.19). There is a full bibliography of primary and secondary sources.
On the cover appears a leaf from British Library Add. MS 11695 showing an enthroned figure and ritual beheadings. The throne is very much in keeping with how the play must have been staged. The King of the Teutons--the most warlike ruler--does speak of the gladium ultoris, “the sword of an avenger” (123.3) and Enoch and Elijah promise judgement, but a naive reader might expect from the cover illustration more graphic violence than actually appears in the play. A search reveals that the leaf comes from the famous Silos Apocalypse, contemporary in date and eschatological subject but not in geography or genre. More attention to the genre of Apocalypses and a fuller discussion of the Antichrist tradition would be welcome (e.g., Bernard McGinn is cited but not engaged). To be fair, Thomas must have substantially condensed and truncated his dissertation in order to fit the parameters of this publication.
Thomas and Symes successfully embed this play in its time and place and provide a scholarly and accessible edition and translation.