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Resurrection: Representation v. Reality
In a Miracle of St John of Beverley
Susan E Wilson
John of Beverley, Bishop of Hexham from 687 to 706, and then Bishop
of York until his retirement and subsequent death in 721, was the
subject of a number of post-mortem miracle collections composed
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. One of these collections,
which was written between 1211 and 1219, reveals an author who was
clearly aware of the power of the written word to communicate theological
concepts and church dogma to his audience. His stories are all dramatic
narratives that create vivid visual impressions, and in so doing
entertain whilst at the same time serve as a skilful teaching medium.
In recounting the miracles, the author assumes the role of omniscient
narrator and ascribes motivations and emotions to the people who
figure in the stories, making this a very self-consciously literary
collection of miracles. It is clear that, as well as possessing
a firm belief that divine influence governs all aspects of people’s
lives, this writer had a profound interest in exploiting the possibilities
of language as an effective medium of communicating what he sees
as the truth of his faith.
One of the stories in this collection concerns the apparent resurrection
from death of a child who had fallen from the roof, high up inside
the church of St John, whilst a dramatic representation of the resurrection
of Christ was being performed in the cemetery outside by a group
of players. All miracle stories claim to honour God and the saint
through whom he performs his miraculous works, and this is no exception.
It was written and preserved at Beverley to demonstrate that a special
relationship existed between John and God, who wrought miracles
for and through his saint. This, in turn, validated the claims of
the church community that John’s relics were a source of spiritual
power, and that appeals to the saint could result in the performance
of miracles. This was of vital significance to the church community
as it gave them the authority to promote the cult, with all the
material and spiritual benefits that flow from that activity.
However, as well as glorifying God and St John, this author uses
the miracle in a number of ingenious ways, not least to illustrate
the entire Christian message from Abraham to the incarnation of
Christ, his death and resurrection. He also establishes a relationship
between the resurrection of the child, the resurrection of Christ,
and the theatrical representation of that defining event. At the
same time he creates an analogy between the different kinds of representation
involved: his own representation in language, the actors’ performance
in play, and God’s reenactment of Christ’s resurrection.
In creating these analogies, the author implicitly questions the
ability of either the linguistic or dramatic representations to
express truth as adequately as the physical re-creation of the event.
As the only English translation of this story can only be found
in my unpublished thesis, I reproduce that text hereunder:1
A boy who fell from the high arch of the church of Beverley
and was killed, gets up safe and sound.
One summer a representation of the Sunday resurrection was performed
by the words and action of players (as is customary), on the northern
side of the church of Saint John within the cemetery enclosure.
A great number of people of both sexes flocked together there,
having been drawn there by various vows, for pleasure of course,
or to be amazed, or for the sacred purpose of being inspired with
devotion. Indeed, when a large number of people could not get
in because of the dense crowd standing around, especially some
who were very small in stature, several people entered into the
church, either so that they might pray, or to look at the paintings,
or to avoid the boredom of this day through some sort of recreation
and amusement. Then some young boys, having entered into the church,
by some lucky chance found a half-open door through which stairs
ascended to the roof. Running to it with boyish recklessness,
they climbed the arches of the church over the walls, step by
step, with the intention, I suppose, that they might look more
freely upon both the clothes and gestures of the actors, and hear
their speeches more easily through the great windows of the turrets,
or through any openings there might be in the glass windows; in
this they were imitating Zacchaeus, who since he was small in
stature, climbed up a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus.2
But, look! The watchmen have been told what the boys were doing.
No doubt fearing that the boys' rashness in wanting to see the
players performing the aforementioned presentation might break
the glass windows, or somehow destroy them, they chased swiftly
after them; and when they had scolded those boys for their impetuosity,
and beaten them very soundly, they forced them to go back.
One of the boys, having seen his friends’ punishment, fearing
to fall into the hands of the pursuing men, withdrew even higher,
until by running swiftly he reached a great cross on the far side,
at that time erected above the altar of St Martin. Standing there
and looking downwards, he carelessly put his foot on a square
stone which, since it loosened from the wall and fell off, plummeted
down upon the stone pavement with a great crashing and, not withstanding
the hardness, it was smashed to smithereens. Indeed, the young
boy, having been deprived of his support, struck with a dreadful
stupefaction, fell to the ground and there lay lifeless for a
long time, very much like a corpse. Many people stood around sighing
heavily, groaning piteously over such an accident, grieving for
his suffering with many tears. His parents wailed and tore their
hair, they interspersed their cries and howling with frequent
sobs, not knowing that in a short time, because of divine dispensation,
their sadness was going to be changed into joy, their weeping
into laughter. For God, not allowing the church which had been
dedicated in his and the confessor's honour, to be defiled by,
as it were, human slaughter, but wanting the church to be possessed
of greater authority in the future, and also wanting to provide
evidence of the truth of that representation of the resurrection
which was being performed at the same time, in the sight of everyone
present he raised up the boy, who was believed to be dead, so
unharmed that there was not a single scratch to be seen on his
whole body.
Moreover it was done so that those who were unable to see the
dramatic representation because of the great number of people
outside the church would see a more marvellous expression of the
resurrection inside the body of the church; and not only of the
resurrection, but of the Lord's passion. For truly, through the
cutting off of the stone, which detached itself from the wall
without human agency, the Incarnation of the Lord, born of a virgin
without male intervention, was clearly indicated: through each
fall, that is to say both of the stone and of the boy, his passion
was signified, of man and of God. Further, the stone that had
been broken into pieces in the fall, carried with it the image
of a ram that had been struck down; truly the child was an image
of Isaac remaining unharmed.3
Therefore the fall was a sign of his passion relating to his human
nature; furthermore, the miracle by which he was raised up was
a sign of his resurrection in accordance with his divinity.
From the perspective of the history of drama, this story sheds valuable
light on the public performance of vernacular drama at a remarkably
early date. The Latin word used to describe the performance is ‘repraesentatio’
rather than ‘ludus’ or ‘spectaculum’, which
leaves no doubt that this is a play. However, it is not a liturgical
play. The writer of the collection of miracles, of which this story
is the first, is very conscientious about locating his stories within
the liturgical year whenever possible, but with this particular
miracle story, all he tells us is that it was in the summertime.
The absence of any reference to Easter, Corpus Christi, or any other
feast day suggests that the author does not consider the liturgical
date to be significant. Although the play is connected with the
church and has as its theme one of the most important scriptural
events for the Christian Church, it is not inside the church, but
outside in the churchyard. It is open to the public and has attracted
a great crowd of people of both sexes, adults and children alike.
All these things taken together indicate that this is not a liturgical
play, but a play designed to entertain the general populace. It
would therefore have been in the vernacular, not in Latin. This
is borne out by the claim that the boys climbed the stairs in the
church because they wanted to try to hear the speeches of the actors,
something which would have been fruitless for these youngsters if
the performance had been in Latin.
The narrative also gives us a valuable insight into the motivations
of the audience of such plays, giving reasons as to why people attended
them and what they expected to get from watching the performance:
some had spiritual motivations, others wished to be entertained
and derive pleasure from the experience, and the boys wanted to
hear the speeches and see the players’ costumes and gestures.
The words “as is customary” (“ut assolet”) used
to describe the performance could be an indication that this was
not a singular event, but that such plays formed a regular part
of that society’s cultural activities. However, bearing in
mind that the oldest manuscript we have containing this story is
of the fourteenth century, it is always possible that this particular
phrase was interpolated at the time the text was copied; it was
not unusual for scribes to “update” the works they were
copying to conform to the current situation. Nevertheless, whether
or not the performance of this play was a regular event, we clearly
have an extremely early reference, perhaps as early as 1211, to
a type of drama that is popular in both senses of the word.
A major concern of the author is to set up parallels between the
dramatic performance of the resurrection play, the miraculous raising
up of the child, and Christ’s resurrection as portrayed in
the Scriptures. One of the ways in which he does this is by establishing
an analogy between different kinds of audiences: those watching
the play outside the church, those watching the miraculous event
inside the church, including himself and us, the text’s audience,
who contemplate in our imaginations two types of representations
of the original defining event.
The people massed in the churchyard to watch the resurrection play
can be seen as analogous to the crowds that were drawn to watch
Christ’s actual condemnation and crucifixion. This link is
made specific by likening the boys, who were too short to see over
everyone’s heads and climbed the stairway in an attempt to
see the play, with Zaccheus, who was also short and unable to see
Jesus and so found a way to climb above the crowds to get a better
view of him.4 The
chasing and beating of the boys by the watchmen of the church can
also be seen as corresponding to the pursuit of Jesus and his disciples
at Gethsemane by the priests and elders who sought his destruction.
Having climbed as high as he could in his endeavour to escape his
pursuers, the boy is said to have stood by the great cross above
the altar of St Martin. This image of him standing before a great
cross offers a direct comparison and living example of Christ at
his crucifixion. When he lies apparently dead on the floor of the
church, the text’s audience is provided with the reaction of
the audience within the text to the boy’s death: they groan
and sigh, wail and tear their hair when the accident happens. However,
we are told that when the boy rises up unharmed, their mood is to
be transformed to one of joy and laughter. By describing the emotional
response of this audience, the author is presenting his own audience
with an example of the proper way in which they, too, should respond
to the death and resurrection of Christ.
Two of the reasons the author gives for God’s decision to perform
this miracle relate to local concerns which are linked with the
promotion of the cult: firstly, to avoid John’s church from
being defiled by human death; and secondly, so that the church should
possess greater authority in the future. Both of these issues were
of great importance to the church community, as a child’s death
within the church might have cast doubt on its sanctity, and the
ability of their patron saint to prevent such a tragic event. This
could have resulted in fewer pilgrims visiting the church, with
a resultant decline in the popularity of the cult. Conversely, a
reversal of the death by means of a miraculous resurrection would
have had tremendous public relations value. This would have validated
the claim that John was an extremely powerful intercessor with God,
and would have made his shrine an even more attractive place for
pilgrims to visit.
The text then moves beyond local issues to the theological concerns
of the Catholic Church: God performed the miracle to prove the truth
not only of Christ’s resurrection, but also of his passion.
The standard biblical analogy for a miracle in which someone is
supposedly raised from the dead through the intercession of a saint
is that of Lazarus, thereby linking the saint directly with Christ
as one who was able to perform a similar act. However, this author
does not interpret this particular miracle in that conventional
way; rather, he creates a far more complex analogy. In detaching
itself from the wall without human interference, the stone that
led to the boy’s fall is likened to the conception of Christ
by the Virgin Mary, which is also said to have occurred without
any human involvement. Further, the two falls—that of the stone
and of the boy—are interpreted as signifying Christ’s
passion as a man and as a God by likening the destruction of the
stone and the resurrection of the boy to the ram that was sacrificed
in place of Isaac, who rose up from the sacrificial bier unharmed.
The fall of the boy is thus imbued with providential significance
and is elevated to the status of two of the most significant biblical
events: the salvation of Isaac as told in Genesis, and the redemption
of humankind through Christ’s passion and resurrection as told
in the New Testament, episodes traditionally linked typologically.
The whole event is interpreted as illustrating the truth of the
entire Christian message: that Christ endured suffering in accordance
with his humanity and was resurrected in accordance with his divinity.
This not only presses home the message of the gospels, but also
carries the underlying message that the truth of the scriptures
is as valid and relevant in the present as it was when the events
recorded first took place.
So rather than merely demonstrating the merits of St John, for whom
God performed the miracle, the saint is also endowed with universal
relevance as an intrinsic part of the divine superstructure. At
the same time, the glossing of this story has gone far beyond the
normal hagiographic convention of glorifying the saint and has become
a didactic discourse in its own right. We are told that in resurrecting
the child God wished to prove the truth of the play being performed
outside, that is, the truth of the defining event of Christ’s
crucifixion that the play claimed to portray. The raising up of
a real child from death is shown to supersede the dramatic representation
of the raising up of Christ: the people inside the church are shown
the reality of a resurrection, whereas those outside are merely
being shown an imitation of a resurrection. This raises questions
as to whether the miracle is also a comment on drama.
In the staging of a play, the scene is set and props are used to
establish the context within which the performance is to take place.
Within this framework the actors perform their parts by communicating
with their audience both visually and orally. The audience sees
the players’ costumes, their facial expressions (or those of
their masks if that is the case), their gestures, and their actions,
and they also hear the words spoken by the actors. These things
together allow them to infer the psychological and/or emotional
state of the character being portrayed. With a piece of writing,
however, all impressions have to be provided through the written
word alone, via the perspective of the narrator. Just as the manner
in which a play is performed, as much as what is performed, conveys
the motivations and emotions of the characters of the drama, so
the manner in which a writer tells the story is dependent upon the
effects s/he wishes to produce.
The whole narrative was written as if it were a dramatic performance.
The scene is set in time and place, the events follow swiftly on
each other as emotions and attitudes are manipulated, a crisis occurs,
and a conclusion is reached. And we, the readers, or hearers, of
the text, are the audience, and those standing around inside the
church are both players in the drama set before us, and witnesses
of the miracle performed in front of them. Further, in the same
way that a play needs an audience in order to fulfil its function,
so the performance of a miracle has to be witnessed in order for
it to be recognized as an act of divine intervention; together with
the people in the church, we are witnesses to this miraculous event
via this incredible narrative.
The text suggests that the events were taking place before the narrator’s
eyes. He puts himself in the position of an audience to the drama
unfolding before him, at times explicitly locating himself inside
the narrative: “with the intention, I suppose, that they might
look [. . .]” he writes. As we, the readers, imagine him watching
the events occur, we are able to visualize the scene as if we were
watching it happen too: we are put in the same position as spectators
at a play.
With his opening sentence he sets the scene for the events that
are to unfold, and at the same time articulates its central theme.
We are in the cemetery to the north of St John’s church one
summer’s day, and a representation of Christ’s resurrection
is to be performed. He then creates a picture in words of a crowded
churchyard, thronged with a mass of people, ascribing a number of
different motives as to why they are there, and why some of them
decide to enter the church.
With knowledge of the disaster to come one might have expected the
author to write that the boys find the half-open door ‘by some
unlucky chance’, but instead he writes this from their viewpoint:
it is a “lucky chance” because they see this as an opportunity
to get sight of the play. Their excitement is communicated to us
as we are told that they run to the door “with boyish recklessness.”
“But, look!” cries the narrator, as if he, and we, are
present and watching the scene, and he is actually pointing out
to us the watchmen chasing after the boys. This adds to the sense
of the action unfolding before his and our eyes.
When the boy reaches the great cross, he is said to stand there
and look downward. This latter, small detail is superfluous to the
event and serves no purpose in advancing the narrative, but it helps
us visualize the scene. We get a vivid picture of a small child
standing perilously high up in the church, looking down at the ground
far below, which gives us a sense of perspective and increasing
the tension as we recognize the danger this boy is in. The accident
itself is described in a highly skilful way with the author creating
a metonymic relationship between the fall of the stone and the fall
of the boy. The description of the stone plummeting down and being
smashed to smithereens on the hard stone floor of the minster, immediately
echoed by the fall of the boy, creates a powerful image and has
great emotional impact.
This author has put before his audience a number of different ways
in which the death and resurrection of Christ may be represented:
through the medium of play, through written narrative, and through
an imitation of the original event involving ‘real’ death
and a ‘real’ resurrection. However, his claim that one
of the reasons God chose to perform this miracle was so that the
audience inside the church could see a more marvellous expression
of Christ’s resurrection than those watching the dramatic performance
outside in the cemetery suggests that God’s actions were essentially
in imitation of the play. So what we have here is a rather complex
situation: the play being performed in the churchyard is a dramatic
representation of Christ’s death and resurrection; the death
and resurrection of the boy inside the church are both an actual
representation of that defining event, and a representation of the
play.
The characters in a play can only act out the roles ascribed to
them, pretend to experience emotion and, indeed, pretend to die.
It is claimed that one of God’s reasons for performing the
miracle was to prove the truth of the play, and by extension, the
truth of the original event. This implies that a genuine physical
enactment of death and resurrection is a far superior medium through
which to demonstrate the truth of the scriptures, than any artificial,
dramatic performance, no matter how well acted.
Whilst casting doubt on the ability of play to communicate meaning
as effectively as a physical reenactment of events, the author explores
the possibility that language might be a more successful medium
to convey the truth of Christ’s experience. The style in which
he chose to recount the miracle story is highly reminiscent of the
dramatic effects of a theatrical performance. But whilst he was
unable to exploit the visual impact of theatre, he compensated for
this by describing the events in an extremely pictorial way, thereby
enabling the text’s audience to envisage the events in its
mind’s eye. He also employed his linguistic skills to relay
effectively the emotions of the characters in his text and to encourage
his audience to share in their experiences.
Whereas his stylistic technique enabled him to emulate theatrical
performance in the way in which he told the story, he nevertheless
also had it within his power to go beyond the capabilities of a
dramatic representation to communicate the truth of God’s work
to its audience. Indeed, in his all-encompassing, yet precise, interpretation
of the significance of the event that took place in the church that
day, he went far beyond anything that the average witness to the
miracle could have inferred. In this way he ensured that the interpretation
of the event ultimately took precedence over its representation:
through language his representation of the boy’s death and
resurrection was, in fact, far superior even to the experience of
God’s miracle in its ability to convey fully the deeper spiritual
truth of the act as he saw it.
Notes
1 Susan E Wilson, “The Cult of
St John of Beverley,” unpublished doctoral thesis (University
of Southampton, 2001), appendix 5B . The thesis also provides the
Latin text (appendix 5A), which can also be found in Acta Sanctorum
Bollandiana, 64 vols (Antwerp 1680), Mai II, 187-88; and The Historians
of the Church of York and its Archbishops, ed. James Raine, 3 vols,
RS 71 (1879-94), i. 328-30. Return
2 Luke 19.3-4. Return
3 Genesis 22.Return
4 Luke 19.1-10 Return
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