The Ordo Rachelis (Play of Rachel), Interfectio Puerorum (Murder of the Children), or Ludus Innocentium (Play of the Innocents) is a medieval dramatic

Medieval theatre

Medieval theatre refers to the theatre of Europe between the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century A.D. and the beginning of the Renaissance in approximately the 15th century A.D...

 tradition consisting in four play

Play (theatre)

A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...

s and based on the Massacre of the Innocents

Massacre of the Innocents

The Massacre of the Innocents is an episode of infanticide by the King of Judea, Herod the Great. According to the Gospel of Matthew Herod orders the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem, so as to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn King of the Jews whose birth...

, an event recorded in the Gospel of Matthew

Gospel of Matthew

The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth...

, and on the prophecy recorded in the Book of Jeremiah

Book of Jeremiah

The Book of Jeremiah is the second of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, following the book of Isaiah and preceding Ezekiel and the Book of the Twelve....

: "A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not" (31:15, KJV). The prophecy, which Matthew believed to be fulfilled when Herod the Great

Herod the Great

Herod , also known as Herod the Great , was a Roman client king of Judea. His epithet of "the Great" is widely disputed as he is described as "a madman who murdered his own family and a great many rabbis." He is also known for his colossal building projects in Jerusalem and elsewhere, including his...

 ordered the slaughter of all boys under two in Bethlehem

Bethlehem

Bethlehem is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank of the Jordan River, near Israel and approximately south of Jerusalem, with a population of about 30,000 people. It is the capital of the Bethlehem Governorate of the Palestinian National Authority and a hub of Palestinian culture and tourism...

, looks backwards to Rachel

Rachel

Rachel , as described in the Hebrew Bible, is a prophet and the favorite wife of Jacob, one of the three Biblical Patriarchs, and mother of Joseph and Benjamin. She was the daughter of Laban and the younger sister of Leah, Jacob's first wife...

, the matriarch of the Hebrews

Hebrews

Hebrews is an ethnonym used in the Hebrew Bible...

, and towards her lamentation over the death of her children, the Hebrew children, in the massacre.

The Ordo Rachelis plays were probably performed as part of the liturgy

Liturgy

Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...

 for Innocents Day (28 December).

Texts and origins

The first modern critical edition of the Rachel plays was made by Karl Young in 1919. Young believed the plays developed from dramatic kernels in the Epiphany plays of the ninth and tenth centuries into full dramatic treatments of their own in the elventh and twelfth. The four extensive treatments which Young classified as ordines Rachelis differ considerably. There are the Lamentatio Rachelis from Saint-Martial at Limoges

Limoges

Limoges |Limousin]] dialect of Occitan) is a city and commune, the capital of the Haute-Vienne department and the administrative capital of the Limousin région in west-central France....

 (eleventh century), a lengthy part of an Epiphany play from Laon

Laon

Laon is the capital city of the Aisne department in Picardy in northern France.-History:The hilly district of Laon, which rises a hundred metres above the otherwise flat Picardy plain, has always held strategic importance...

 (twelfth century), a play from Freising

Freising

Freising is a town in Bavaria, Germany, and capital of the district Freising. Total population 48,500.The city is located north of Munich at the Isar river, near the Munich International Airport...

 (late eleventh century), and another one from Fleury

Fleury Abbey

Fleury Abbey in Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Loiret, France, founded about 640, is one of the most celebrated Benedictine monasteries of Western Europe, which posseses the relics of St. Benedict of Nursia. Its site on the banks of the Loire has always made it easily accessible from Orléans, a center of...

 (thirteenth century). Only the last two can be regarded as "separate dramatic unit[s]". In both of them the fuga in Egyptum

Flight into Egypt

The flight into Egypt is a biblical event described in the Gospel of Matthew , in which Joseph fled to Egypt with his wife Mary and infant son Jesus after a visit by Magi because they learn that King Herod intends to kill the infants of that area...

and the pastores themes have been incorporated, and the Fleury play contains the only extant medieval dramatic representation of the return from Egypt. Chambers has gone so far as to suggest a coalescing of all the Epiphany themes in the Fleury ordo and of a merging of the Rachel and Herod (Herodes) themes in the Freising.

The late eleventh-century manuscript of the Limoges ordo is now lat. 1139 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France

Bibliothèque nationale de France

The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...

, Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, which contains many liturgical pieces, including the play Sponsus

Sponsus

Sponsus or The Bridegroom is a medieval Latin and Occitan dramatic treatment of Jesus' parable of the ten virgins. A liturgical play designed for Easter Vigil, it was composed probably in Gascony or western Languedoc in the mid-eleventh century...

. The Fleury version is preserved in the famous Fleury Playbook

Fleury Playbook

The Fleury Playbook is a medieval collection of Latin biblical dramas dating from around 1200 AD. It was included in a composite volume of sermons, biblical texts, liturgical dramas, and hymns that was bound and kept at the library of Abbaye Saint Benoît de Fleury, a Benedictine monastery at...

, an important eleventh-century compilation of liturgical drama.

As to the origins of the tradition Karl Young concluded, like Heinrich Anz before him (Die lateinischen Magierspiele, 1905), that it was initially an independent trope

Trope (literature)

A literary trope is the usage of figurative language in literature, or a figure of speech in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning...

 at Limoges and then appended to the Officium stellae at Laon, representing a French tradition. This tradition was merged with a German one that arose at Freising at Fleury, though the ecclesiastical affairs that brought about this transmission (from Laon, Limoges, and Freising to Fleury) are unknown. Young differs from Anz in that the latter thought the Freising text also developed from the Limoges original. An older theory of origins was put forth by William Meyer (Fragmenta Burana, 1901). He hypothesised that a south German original, large and complex, disintegrated into a Freising play that was largely a whittled-down copy and three divergent French plays that were influenced by the French liturgy.

Peter Dronke

Peter Dronke

Ernest Peter Michael Dronke FBA is a scholar specialising in Medieval Latin literature. He is one of the 20th century's leading scholars of medieval Latin lyric, and his book The Medieval Lyric is considered the standard introduction to the subject.-Life and career:Dronke was born in Cologne in...

 believes it was to the dialogic poem Quid tu, virgo by Notker the Stammerer, written probably in the 860s, that the eleventh-century dramatists were responding with their Rachel sequences.

Plot and drama

The Rachel of the play is symbolically every Hebrew mother who lost her child to the massacre. In the Freising version, she opens the action by singing a planctus

Planctus

A planctus is a lament or dirge, a song or poem expressing grief or mourning. It became a popular literary form in the Middle Ages, when they were written in Latin and in the vernacular . The most common planctus is to mourn the death of a famous person, but a number of other varieties have been...

over her children's bodies before a consolatrix (female comforter) arrives to soothe her spirit. In the Fleury version, she sings a series of four plancti before two consolatrices come out to catch her as she faints. The consolatrices fail to comfort her, but lead her away. In both versions they sing the final lines. In the Fleury version the drama began with a procession of young boys per monasterium (down the aisle of the church's nave) and a lamb bearing a cross appears running "to and fro" (huc et illuc). Then the action shifts to Herod receiving his sceptre and Joseph at the manger receiving a message from Gabriel

Gabriel

In Abrahamic religions, Gabriel is an Archangel who typically serves as a messenger to humans from God.He first appears in the Book of Daniel, delivering explanations of Daniel's visions. In the Gospel of Luke Gabriel foretells the births of both John the Baptist and of Jesus...

 to flee to Egypt. Joseph and the holy family exit secretly while Herod attempts suicide as news is brought that the Magi

Magi

Magi is a term, used since at least the 4th century BC, to denote a follower of Zoroaster, or rather, a follower of what the Hellenistic world associated Zoroaster with, which...

 avoided telling him the Christ child's location. After he regains his composure, he orders the massacre. The lamb is then led off stage and the massacre begins, despite the pleas of the mothers and the children to the angels above. After the Rachel scenes, an angel conducts the children to the choir and a dumb show

Dumb Show

Dumb Show is a play by Joe Penhall.The three-character play, directed by Terry Johnson, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre' London, September 4, 2004. It received its American premiere at South Coast Repertory in September, 2006. It was performed at Keswick's Theatre by the Lake from...

 shows Herod being succeeded as king by Archelaus

Archelaus

- Historical persons :*Archelaus , pupil of Anaxagoras, 5th century BC*Archelaus I of Macedon, reigned 413-399 BC*Archelaus , fought in the First, Second and Third Mithridatic Wars...

 before the holy family returns from Egypt. The entire Fleury play ends with a singing of the Te Deum

Te Deum

The Te Deum is an early Christian hymn of praise. The title is taken from its opening Latin words, Te Deum laudamus, rendered literally as "Thee, O God, we praise"....

.