Enough has perhaps been said to suggest the variety of these plays, the glow of colour that pervades them, and to show how far their author, although his genius was never fully realized in his _autos_, had travelled from the first glimmerings of the drama in Portugal and from his first model, Enzina. Rudiments of dramatic art existed in the Middle Ages in the ceremonies provided by an essentially dramatic Church and in the mummeries and mimicking _jograes_ that delighted the people. Bonamis and his companion furnished some kind of extremely primitive play (_arremedillum_) for King Sancho I, and they were probably only the most successful of hundreds of wandering mimics and players. Mimicry and scenic display[271] were the principal ingredients of the _momos_ in which Rui de Sousa excelled[272] and the _entremeses_ for which Portugal was famous: they scarcely belonged to literature, although they might include a song and prose _breve_ such as the Conde do Vimioso’s, printed in the _Cancioneiro Geral_. Religious processions and Christmas, Epiphany, Passion, or Easter scenes[273] gave further scope for dramatic display, as also popular ceremonies such as that in which ‘Emperors’ and ‘Kings’--figures similar, no doubt, to those still to be seen in Spanish processions (e. g. at Valencia)--were carried in triumph to the churches, accompanied by _jograes_ who invaded the pulpit and preached profane sermons containing ‘many iniquities and abominations’, even while mass was in progress. The popular tendencies darkly suggested in the _Constituições_ are manifest in Vicente’s plays--the Christmas _representações_, the preaching of burlesque sermons, parodies of the mass, profane litanies, parodies and paraphrases of the Lord’s Prayer. Like the _Clercs de la Bazoche_ in France, he represents the drama breaking its ecclesiastical fetters. It was, however, from Spain that the idea of his _autos_ first came to him, as the direct imitations of Juan del Enzina (1469?-1529?) in Vicente’s early pieces and the explicit statement of Garcia de Resende in his _Miscellania_ prove: he speaks of the _representações_ of very eloquent style and new devices invented in Portugal by Gil Vicente, and adds the qualifying clause that credit for the invention of the _pastoril_ belongs to Enzina. But the wine of Vicente’s genius soon burst the old bottles, and when his plays ceased to be confined to the _pastoril_ he naturally turned elsewhere for suggestion. He himself towards the end of his life called his religious plays _moralidades_, and the real name of the play popularly known as the _Farsa da Mofina Mendes_ was _Os Mysterios da Virgem_.[274] The introduction of Lucifer as _Maioral do Inferno_ and Belial as his _meirinho_[275] may have been derived from French _mystères_; the conception of his _Barcas_ certainly owed more to the _Danse macabre_ (probably through the Spanish fifteenth-century _Danza de la Muerte_) than to Dante. The