The Liturgical Drama in Medieval Spain

This work, the first comprehensive study of liturgical drama in medieval Spain, including its origins, is based on extensive and systematic research in the libraries of Spain and France and in the British Library in London.

The author presents not only the unedited dramatic texts he has discovered in medieval Spanish manuscripts, but also any examples of Spanish liturgical drama known to him which have been previously edited, in the hopes of providing a convenient and relatively complete corpus of Spanish liturgical plays. It becomes apparent from this study that Catalonia was one of the great centres of liturgical drama in Europe; Castile was not. Donovan advances several hypotheses that might explain the failure of medieval liturgical drama to penetrate Castile on a large scale. The bibliography includes a long list of over 500 liturgical manuscripts, as well as 125 incunabula and early printed editions.