La Nativité dans "La Passion d’Arras" d’Eustache Marcadé : mise en scène et mise en image au XVe siècle
The Nativity in "The Arras Mystery Play", by Eustache Marcadé : staging and imaging in the fifteenth century

Summary/Abstract: The "Arras Mystery Play", a play in verse structured in 4 days, presents, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the essence of christianity to the audience whom it intends to instruct. Written before 1414 by the ecclesiastical Eustache Marcadé, the text is kept in one of the most important illuminated manuscripts of the Medieval European theatre, used for silent devotion. One of the play’s central episodes is the Nativity of Christ, event that is staged through text and image montage. The presence of the two midwives in the stable of Bethlehem, apparently useless because Mary didn’t need help to gave birth to her child, is essential in the text. The extraordinary birth of Jesus is emphasized thanks to Salomée’s disbelief: she didn’t believe in the miracle of Mary’s virginity. Her doubt reinforces the truth of this mystery and it presents itself like a reception lesson: the good manners of believing and seeing the Incarnation mystery are revealed to the readers.

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