Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/290

 2 78 HISTOEY OF THE geeman people Judas is made to minister to the comic element by finding, on going out, that he has been paid the price of his treachery in false money. But the never -failing character is the Devil, who at one time is made to take the part of a stupid bungler, at another of a presump- tuous braggart, while again, as in ' The Devil's Net," he figures as a preacher inveighing against himself. A very remarkable play, composed in Low German, was acted at Eedentin, near Wismar (1475), in which the comic position of the devils is fraught with deep meaning. Lucifer, finding his power overcome by the mystery of the Eedemption, sits chained in a barrel, which is supposed to represent hell, and indulges in a soliloquy which shows his bitterness and wild despair. The proof of the Divinity of Christ through the Kesur- rection, and the deliverance of the souls in limbo, are facts unbearable to him. He is not only enraged by his own damnation, but filled with envy and hate towards redeemed mankind, and bewails that a creature whom he despised as lower than himself will enter heaven, from which he is banished. It reminds one of an illustration by Diirer in the famous Prayer-book of Maximilian, where the Devil is screaming and tearing his hair at the Incarnation. Chained fast himself, Lucifer sends his devils out into the world in order to drag men into hell ; but they act stupidly, and are at last all sent in a body to Liibeck, where he sees a rich harvest. Then follow clever satires aimed at the pre- vailing abuses and weaknesses. As Dante in his ' Divine Comedy ' introduces the various political questions of his time, so does this poet of the Middle Ages make use of the feuds existing between the houses of Liibeck and Wismar, and by this local colouring adds materially to*