In the liturgic drama of the Roman Church must be sought the origin of the oratorio, which, in a musically coherent form, appeared at about the same time with the opera, as the spiritual counterpart of its secular companion, making a devotional and intellectual appeal in place of the sensual. In the mediæval church two forms of the mass were in use side by side: the Roman office, which was mainly celebrated by the priest, and the Gallican Mass, a freer form, in which the people largely participated. Quite naturally the divergence between the two became marked and during the twelfth century the Gallican Mass was reformed with regard to lay participation. In order, however, that the people, who were attached to a form in which they took so direct a part, might be compensated for this exclusion, dramatic representations were devised, based on the Scriptures, all with reference to the great church festivals, especially that of Holy Week. In these the germ of the idea of the oratorio is to be found. These dramatic representations took the form of mysteries and miracle plays--dramatic versions of Scriptural episodes, with music, both sacred and secular, introduced to heighten their effect--as well as moralities, in which Christian virtues and mental qualities were treated allegorically. They included processionals of the type of the ancient _Festum Asinorum_ (‘The Ass’s Festival’), commemorating the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt, which was annually celebrated at Beauvais and Sens as early as the twelfth century, and in which the celebrated carol, _Prose de l’Ane_ (‘Hymn of the Ass’), still preserved, was the central feature. With the monodic revolution which was inaugurated at the close of the sixteenth century and which marked the beginning of opera, the history of oratorio as a distinctly musical rather than a liturgic art-form may be said to begin. The sacred musical drama was generally staged in the vestry or vestibule of church or convent--its ‘oratory’--and in course of time the term oratorio was applied to this music. In the oratory of St. Filippo Neri’s church in Rome (_S. Girolamo della Charità_) Animuccia’s settings of _laudi spirituali_ (sacred songs of praise) had already been sung in the sixteenth century; and the fact that these hymns were often used in connection with Biblical recitations is not without direct influence on the development of the form. I Yet it was not until the performance of Emilio del Cavalieri’s _Rappresentazione di anima e di corpo_ (Rome, in February, 1600), in which Time, Life, The World, Pleasure, Intellect, The Soul and The Body appeared, that the first actual oratorio was heard in germinal shape, during the same year that witnessed the world _première_ of all opera with Peri’s _Euridice_, which took place in Florence in December.