At the centre of medieval Christendom in the West was the Latin Vulgate Bible, to varying degrees inaccessible to the many people— the laity, conversi, and some women religious— who received little or no Latin training and who, even if they could recite passages of Latin liturgy, sometimes had only the most pragmatic understanding of the language, in the most specific liturgical contexts. Vernacular drama was a particularly effective tool for teaching Scriptural narratives and their Christological significance, at the same time as encouraging appropriate affective responses in an audience of believers; vernacular drama also offered a gloss on the biblical stories that were the primary influence on the Latin liturgy. This chapter considers a specific example in which biblical material moves through time and space through the medium of dramatic representation in the fifteenth-century medieval convent; it will explore the outcomes of the interpretation and transformation of scripture through its translation into dramatic form, and consider the adaptation and transmission of the resulting material into the seventeenth century.

Like civic Scriptural drama, nuns’ plays translated Vulgate Latin into the vernacular in order to teach biblical narrative; also like civic drama, but perhaps to an even greater degree, convent drama referenced liturgical elements to explain their function. The objective of the liturgy was the worship of God and petition directed heavenward: medieval congregations may not have contributed to its words or action but they were thoroughly engaged in the intention of the celebration. Medieval plays complicate neat distinctions between performers and spectators that characterize later theatre, and convent plays blur distinctions between actors and audience much further, as in some cases there may have been nobody watching who was not also performing, and if there were “audiences” then their responses— active, as well as affective— were integrated into the work of the plays. Scriptural plays written and performed by medieval nuns necessarily differed from plays written for the medieval city street because they were performed in contexts that were inaccessible to the general public, and free from the influence of civic authorities for whom public playing was an opportunity for the display of power and prestige.