There are four York plays devoted to the end of Mary’s life: her death, her burial, her soul’s rising into heaven (the Assumption), and her coronation as Queen of Heaven. While these events were not strictly part of the story of salvation from Adam’s fall to Christ’s resurrection, they tied up the loose ends of the story by showing what happened to the most important figure next to Jesus: his mother. These plays were not without controversy, and sometimes they were not all produced.
One of the problems with these plays from our modern point of view is that in a few places, they single out Jews for negative comment. When Mary is dying, two Jews come to ask her help in obtaining forgiveness for them, “that we may be broght unto blisse.” And in “The Funeral of the Virgin,” the play (its text is missing) would have told us a legend about a Jew named, improbably, Fergus.
Fergus is angry because everyone is singing Psalms for the funeral; he reaches out to disrupt the bier, and his hand gets stuck. I had a hard time finding accurate information on what else happens, but we know that the Masons’ Guild petitioned to stop producing it and get a more dignified play. First, the story was not really in the Bible, so it felt lower in dignity than the other plays. Second, the crowd loved it for the reason that it’s about beating a Jew. So that’s one thing we know: the Jew, Fergus, would have been beaten by the Apostles and the crowd. The Masons may not have objected to the Jew’s treatment, but the crowd’s noise and laughter disrupted the sober, devotional mood of the festival. The Linenweavers took over the play; perhaps they had been on a wait list for a decade or two.
“The Assumption of the Virgin” and “The Coronation of the Virgin” may have competed for attention, since both were produced by well-funded guilds. The Weavers produced “the Assumption,” perhaps because the legend that’s played out is connected to Mary’s woven belt. The Twelve Apostles had been miraculously present for Mary’s death, except that Thomas, who was far away in India, was late. He arrived to grieve at Mary’s tomb just in time to see angels calling her out to go up to heaven. They speak briefly, and Mary leaves her girdle (belt) with him as a token. This relic was kept in the Cathedral of Prato, in Tuscany.
The angels’ costumes and musical instruments were a place for the wealthy Weavers’ Guild to drop some cash. The script called for twelve angels and three hymns, probably music from the liturgy of the Assumption of the Virgin Mass, celebrated in mid-August. Angels in medieval stained glass windows are often carrying trumpets and harps, so the actors playing these roles (with only one speaking line each) may have been local musicians. They were certainly a trained choir, at the least.
The last play was a light-filled scene of Heaven, with Jesus and angels welcoming Mary to her throne as Queen. By the time the Corpus Christi Festival was established, devotion to Mary as Queen of Heaven was a very large part of Christian faith. During the 14th century, this play seems to have been produced by the Mayor and City Council, therefore in a sense by all of the guilds together. It was probably one of the most popular plays in the cycle.
But the coming of the Reformation made all of the Marian plays problematic. In 1534, England was formally declared independent from Rome. Soon after, officials from London began dissolving the monasteries, turning out monks and nuns and selling the properties to the highest bidder. Abbeys became private homes and libraries were often burnt. Royal officials seized gold and silver items like cups and crosses, and they even seized bronze bells. By 1538, mobs egged on by the royal decrees were smashing relics and images, including burning statues of Mary at the famous shrines. Eventually, the bones of St. Thomas Becket were destroyed at Canterbury Cathedral.
Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the rest of the north were adamantly opposed to these things. All across the northern region, there were armed uprisings. In October 1536, the “Lincolnshire Rising” began when the local abbey was closed and stripped. A monk and a shoemaker led over 20,000 people in marching to occupy Lincoln Cathedral, demanding freedom of religion for Roman Catholics. A royal army headed north, the people dispersed, and the leaders were executed in gory ways. But the executions were barely done when a new uprising began in the form of a mass pilgrimage to York Cathedral. Thomas Aske, a lawyer, led the uprising to occupy York and restore the monks and nuns to their homes. The Duke of Norfolk promised pardons and reforms, and the people dispersed. Naturally, the royal officials then showed up to arrest and execute the leaders in gory ways. Yet another uprising took off in February of 1537, and this time, it wasn’t over until a truly impressive parade of people had been executed in gory ways, with trials lasting most of the year.
When it was time to start checking the pageant-wagons and auditioning actors for June’s Corpus Christi Festival, the men of York must have felt a bit insecure. I don’t think we know if anything changed immediately, but if I were them, I’d have left out the Mary plays since arrests were ongoing. It’s possible that the way “The Funeral of the Virgin” is missing from the record is connected to this insecurity. If they didn’t remove them all by that year, certainly they had done so by 1538, when statues of Mary were burned and relics smashed. The rest of the cycle seems to have continued for a while, for we know that its final suppression wasn’t until 1569. For approximately 30 years, the people of York held onto their tradition, even for a few years after Corpus Christi Day itself was outlawed.
The Mercers had just outfitted a new wagon for Doomsday in 1501. It had a windlass on the iron frame, perhaps covered by a wooden roof, to raise and lower the Judgment Seat. Instead of banners with symbols for the Trinity, it had newly carved alabaster or wood symbols. By 1541, the wagon is mentioned as taking part in a procession when King Henry VIII visited York. I doubt his visit was unconnected to pacifying the city; he was probably there to finalize new appointments. I wonder if the Mercers and others had mixed feelings about their new wagon’s use, but if they did, surely they kept their mouths shut.