Performance issues in the Christos Paschon

A Centre for Medieval Literature Videoseminar.

The curious text known as the Christos Paschon is in many ways a problem. It is ascribed in all 25 manuscripts to Gregory of Nazianzos but was convincingly resited in the twelfth century by Herbert Hunger and Wolfram Hörandner in the 1960s. It claims in its hypothesis to be a treatment ‘according to Euripides’ of the Passion, and appears to be a tragedy with included lament, but its generic status has been disputed.  Its verbal tissue of cento from Euripides and other plays is only now being analysed and discussed.  And above all its performability has been questioned.  This paper asks whether it is a play, whether it is a tragedy, whether it is Euripidean, and looks at the problems involved in performance: time, place and emotion are considered.