Notes on the oldest Croatian spiritual drama

Abstract

The oldest Croatian spiritual dramas, ecclesiastical plays, or ecclesiastical theatre performances (hrvatska crkvena prikazanja, skazanja or misterije, mOteri) constitute an important link in the development of European spiritual drama, the foundations of which are to be sought in church rites and in mediaeval Latin poetry. Ecclesiastical plays constitute a simple rhymed poem whose prime task was to propagate gospels and legends. In the fifteenth century at the latest, they were widely known along the entire shore and islands of the Adriatic; in the sixteenth century they crossed the Dalmatian mountains into Bosnia and the Croatian Banat; and even in the first half of the nineteenth century (in 1837) they were played on the island of Hvar. Although this does not constitute proof of their continuity from oldest times, it is, nevertheless, convincing proof of an old tradition and of the great interest of the people in these plays. The difference between the spiritual drama of the nations of western Europe and the Croatian spiritual drama consists, as in most mediaeval and modern literature, in the fact that in the Croatian regions, particularly on the shores of the Adriatic, literature developed under an intensive influence of the Cyrillo-Methodean cultural heritage. Clear proof of this can be seen in the Slavic divine services practiced even in our time as well as in the Old Slavic glagolitic writing which is also used in Bosnia. Religious literature in this script was printed and published in Senj, Rijeka, and Venice as late as the sixteenth century. The Old Slovene culture propagated among the Croatians, or its earlier phase strengthened by the Glagols expelled from territories of Greater Moravia, experienced an unusual flowering of glagolitic literature in the maritime regions. This is evidenced by the great number of manuscripts, relics both religious and secular, written in glagolitic script (in the spirit of western Roman rite). From the twelfth century onward the Cyrillic script, and from the thirties of the fourteenth century the Latin script, were in use, the latter definitely becoming prevalent. However, in the early periods neither the strong Latin