The 14th-century Czech-Latin play known as
Mastiˇ ckᡠr, or The Ointment Seller, is an Easter
mystery play concerned with the visit of the three
Marys to a seller of balms and spices, from whom
they purchase the ointments with which they intend to embalm the body of Christ on Easter
morning. Probably composed during the reign of
John of Luxembourg (1310–46), the farce may
have been performed as a part of a Central European Easter festival known as the risus paschalis.
The play, written in Czech with Latin passages and
snatches of pseudo-Hebrew as well as broken German, contains raucous farcical and scatological elements that parody the resurrection and satirize
the “outsiders” in Czech society: Jews, Germans,
and women.
The text is preserved in two extant manuscripts:
The longer and earlier of these (431 lines) is in the
Czech National Museum, while the shorter (298
lines) is known by the name of the Austrian town
in which it was discovered, Schlägel.
The plot of the irregular verse drama has the
Marys come to the shop of an ointment seller and
quack doctor named Severin. Before dealing with
the women, he performs a mock resurrection: A
Jew named Abraham approaches him, asking for
an ointment for his dead son Isaac. Severin promises to revive Isaac, and tells his apprentices to concoct the suitable ointment. The chief apprentice,
the Jewish clown Rubin, deliberately replaces the
proper ointment with human feces which, when
used to anoint the dead Isaac’s buttocks, seems to
bring him back to life. Severin tells the boy to stand
up and praise God, Christ, and the Blessed Virgin.
Now the Marys approach and offer to buy the ointment with which to anoint the body of Christ.
Moved by their grief, Severin is willing to give
them a discount on the ointments, but his wife interrupts with shrewish protestation, calling the
Marys whores, and she is ultimately beaten by her
husband. This is followed by another quarrel and
beating of the apprentices, further delaying the
Marys’ obtaining of the necessary ointments.
Scholars have noted how some of the farcical elements in the play seem to derive from folk tradition, evinced, for example, by the parallel between
the plot of The Ointment Seller and the English
mummers’ play, in which a quack doctor performs
a pseudo-resurrection. More controversial is the
use of obscenity and scatological humor in the play.
One suggestion is that the farcical or “carnival” elements in the play are intended to satirize or to deride the oppressive hegemony of the church. Alfred
Thomas, the most recent scholar to comment on
the play, believes the opposite is true: The objects of
satire, he claims, are not those in power but rather
the outsiders in Czech society, including Jews (like
the obscene Rubin as well as Abraham and Isaac,
who make use of the excremental balm); Germans
(whose participation in knightly tournaments is
satirized, and whose language is occasionally
mocked by some of the characters’ use of broken
German words that sound like obscene Czech
ones); and women, who are all depicted as either
hags or whores (until the Marys become part of the
holy Easter story and speak and sing in Latin).
Bibliography
Jakobson, Roman.“Medieval Mock Mystery (The Old
Czech Unguentarius),” in Selected Writings, VI,
Early Slavic Paths and Crossroads, Part Two, Medieval Slavic Studies. Berlin: Mouton, 1985,
666–690.
Thomas, Alfred. Anne’s Bohemia: Czech Culture and
Society, 1310–1420. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1998.
Veltrusky, Jarmila F. A Sacred Farce from Medieval Bohemia—Mastiˇ ckᡠr. Michigan Studies in the Humanities, no. 6. Ann Arbor: Horace H. Rackham
School of Graduate Studies, The University of
Michigan, 1985.