Glossing Christmas: Liturgy, music, exegesis, and drama in high medieval Laon

This dissertation explores the liturgy and drama of Christmas and its related feasts as they are recorded in Laon 263, a late twelfth-century manuscript from the cathedral town of Laon. The cathedral school of Laon was home to Anselm, one of the most famous early twelfth-century teachers of biblical exegesis. He and his associates were responsible for the Glossa ordinaria , the standardized collection of marginal and interlinear commentary on the Bible. This dissertation posits that the local intellectual culture that produced the Gloss also found expression in the Christmas liturgies, specifically in the liturgical dramas performed on three of the feasts. The three dramas present a three-step progression that demonstrates progressively more complex exegetical strategies. The dramas should be viewed not as amusements ancillary to the "proper" liturgy, but as vehicles for exegesis, demonstrating to the cathedral community how to perform exegesis and how to live the truths contained within their texts.;Part I lays the groundwork for this investigation. I first examine the history of scholarly approaches to ritual and drama, concluding that a performance-oriented methodology holds the most promise for bridging the perceived gap between ritual and drama. Chapter 3 examines the historical and social context of twelfth-century Laon, and Chapter 4 focuses specifically on glossing and the Gloss. Here I propose a heuristic called "performative gloss," which suggests that these dramas should be read for the way they recruit visual connections, spatial placement, and motion as unique strategies for explicating the simultaneity of the several truths of scripture.;Part II examines the specific feasts on which dramas were performed. In each case, I first examine the exegetical framework for the feast, considering the symbols that informed the understanding of the celebration. I then turn to the drama, exploring how its text functions in relation to the accompanying liturgy, then positing ways in which it might operate as performative gloss. Chapter 5 addresses Advent, Christmas, and the Ordo Prophetarum . Chapter 6 considers Holy Innocents and the Ordo Stellae ; Chapter 7 explores Epiphany. In Chapter 8, a new interpretation of the Ordo Ioseph draws all strains of the work into a conclusion and points to the potential use of musical symbolism in the plays.