expressed do not appear to have had any weight either of popular or of ecclesiastical sentiment behind them; but they curiously antedate the histriomastic tracts of many a sixteenth and seventeenth-century Puritan. This chapter may be fitly closed by a few words on the subject of nomenclature[340]. The old classical terms of _tragoedia_ and _comoedia_ are not of course normally used of the religious plays until the Renaissance influences come in towards the end of the fifteenth century. Their mediaeval sense, in fact, implies nothing distinctively dramatic[341]. The liturgical plays have often a purely liturgical heading, such as _Processio Asinorum_[342], or _Officium Sepulchri_[343], or _Ordo Rachaelis_[344]. Perhaps _officium_ may be taken to denote the thing itself, the special service or section of a service; _ordo_ rather the book, the written directions for carrying out the _officium_. Or they have a title derived from their subject, such as _Visitatio Sepulchri_[345], or _Suscitatio Lazari_[346]. Or they are introduced in terms which cannot be said to have a technical signification at all, _ad faciendam similitudinem_[347], _ad suscipiendum_[348], _ad repraesentandum_[349]. _Similitudo_ I do not find outside Fleury, nor the corresponding _exemplum_ outside the Benedictbeuern manuscript[350]. From _ad repraesentandum_, however, a technical term does arise, and _repraesentatio_ must be considered, more than any other word, as the mediaeval Latin equivalent of ‘dramatic performance[351].’ This the Italian vernacular preserves as _rappresentazione_. A synonym for _repraesentatio_, which naturally came into use when the intention of recreation began to substitute itself for devotion, is _ludus_, with its vernacular renderings, all in common use, of _jeu_, _Spiel_, ‘play.’ But _ludus_, as already pointed out[352], is a generic term for ‘amusement,’ and the special sense of ‘dramatic play’ is only a secondary one[353]. ‘Clerks’ play’ as a variant for miracle-play is occasionally found[354]. Yet another synonym which makes its appearance in the twelfth century, is _miraculum_; and this, originally a mere convenient shorthand for _repraesentatio miraculi_, came, especially in England, to stand for ‘religious play’ in general[355]. _Mystère_, or ‘mystery,’ on the other hand, is not English at all, in a dramatic sense[356], and in France first appears as _misterie_ in the charter given by Charles VI in 1402 to the Parisian _confrérie de la Passion_[357]. This term also acquires a very general signification by the end of the fifteenth century. Its radical meaning is still matter of dispute. Probably it is derived from _ministerium_, should be spelt _mistère_, and is spelt _mystère_ by a natural confusion with the derivative of μυστήριον. Even then the question remains, what sort of _ministerium_? M. Petit de Julleville would explain it as a ‘religious function,’ and thus equate it precisely with _officium_[358].