be appropriate enough as an addition to the _Quem quaeritis_ and the _Peregrini_ in Easter week. The story is told, indeed, in the Gospel for Friday in the fourth week in Lent; but that does not seem a very likely date for a play. The _Daniel_ perhaps grew, as we have seen a _Balaam_ and a _Nebuchadnezzar_ growing, out of a _Prophetae_; and may have been a substitute for a _Prophetae_ at Christmas. These dates are borne out, or not contradicted, by other similar plays, which have more of a local habitation. For no one of Hilarius’ three stands quite alone. Of Latin plays of St. Nicholas, indeed, quite a little group exists; and the great scholastic feast evidently afforded an occasion, less only than Easter and Christmas, for dramatic performances. The earliest texts are from Germany. Two are found in a Hildesheim manuscript of the eleventh century[212]; a third in an Einsiedeln manuscript of the twelfth[213]. The thirteenth-century Fleury play-book contains no less than four, two of which appear to be more developed forms of the Hildesheim plays. The theme is in every case one of the miraculous deeds which so largely make up the widespread legend of the saint[214]. Nicholas restores to life the three clerks ‘quos causa discendi literas apud gentes transmisit exteras,’ and whom the greed of an innkeeper has slain[215]. He provides with a dowry the daughters of a poor gentleman, who are threatened with a life of shame[216]. He brings back from captivity the son of his wealthy adorer[217]. His image preserves from housebreakers the riches of a Jew[218]. Alone of the extant Latin plays, these of St. Nicholas are drawn from outside the Biblical story. Each of the Fleury versions introduces at the end one of the anthems proper to St. Nicholas’ day, and their connexion with the feast is therefore clear. A second Lazarus play, which includes not only the _Suscitatio_ but also the episode of Mary Magdalen in the house of Simon, is likewise in the Fleury play-book[219]. A second _Daniel_, composed by the _iuventus_ of Beauvais, occurs in the same manuscript which contains the Office of the Circumcision for that cathedral[220]. It was perhaps intended for performance on the day of the _asinaria festa_. Other plays seem, in the same way as the _Daniel_, to have budded off from the _Prophetae_. A fragment is preserved of an _Isaac and Rebecca_ from Kloster Vorau in Styria[221]. A twelfth-century mention of an _Elisaeus_[222] and an eleventh-century one of a _Convivium Herodis_[223], which suggests rather the story of John the Baptist than that of the _Magi_, point to an activity in this direction of which all the traces have possibly not yet been discovered.