formation of the Parisian _Confrérie de la Passion_, which received from Charles VI a privilege to perform in and about the city, and became a model for many similar _confréries_ throughout France. The charter bears the date of 1402. In 1398 the provost of Paris seems to have been moved to forbid dramatic performances without special sanction in the city or suburbs, a prohibition which, by the way, was flouted on the day of its proclamation at Saint-Maur. Exactly what led to this interposition of authority is not clear; but it probably induced the _confrérie_, who may have had a previous less formal existence, to apply for their privilege[292]. The _confrérie de la Passion_ seem to have acted, as a rule, in closed rooms. It is not unlikely that the _puys_ did the same. The altered conditions of representation naturally reacted upon the style and temper of the plays themselves. This is not a subject that can be discussed in detail here, but a few points may be briefly noted. The first is the gradual substitution of vernacular tongues for the Latin of the liturgical drama. This was almost inevitable, where laymen performed to a lay audience. But the liturgical drama itself did not absolutely exclude the vernacular. In the _Sponsus_, and in the _Suscitatio Lazari_ and the Nicholas play of Hilarius, fragments of French are inserted, just as they are in the ‘farced’ epistles used at the feasts of certain saints, notably at that of St. Stephen[293]. It was a step further when in the fourteenth century the nuns of Origny Ste.-Benoîte rewrote their liturgical _Quem quaeritis_, leaving indeed some of the more solemn parts, such as the dialogue of the Maries with the angel, or that of the Magdalen with the risen Christ, in Latin, but turning the rest into French[294]. Such an arrangement as this of Origny Ste.-Benoîte became in the transition plays, intended for out-of-door performance to a popular audience, the rule. There was naturally some local variation. Of the two longer scholars’ plays in the Benedictbeuern manuscript, the Christmas play is wholly, the Passion play mainly, in Latin. A large proportion of Latin seems to have been retained in the Frankfort Passion play of the fourteenth century. But on the whole, as the texts grow, and especially as they draw upon the apocryphal books or the great mediaeval vernacular epics for matter not in the liturgical plays, the vernacular steadily gets the upper hand, until in the latest versions the traces of Latin must be regarded as mere survivals.