Quem Quaeritis Trope 76
This trope was part of the Introit of the Easter Mass; the questions and answers would be sung by two halves of the choir. The tropes were eventually shifted from the Mass to the services of the hours, particularly Matins, the service before daybreak. From a tenth-century manuscript found in the monastery of St. Gall. Reproduced in Medieval and Tudor Drama, ed. John Gassner (1963: New York: Applause Theatre Book Publishers, 1987), 35.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 C.E., the Roman provinces lost contact with the dramatic tradition that the Romans had inherited from the Greeks and spread to all their colonies from the Indus River in Asia to the northern forests of what is now Germany and west to Ireland. The Christian church had spread with the empire, too, but it tended to persist in the remnants of the old regime, now run by local tribal chiefs. The Latin-speaking clerics still had manuscripts of Roman drama, and clearly they must have......
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