(Lat.).
The opening words of the celebrated trope to the introit of the Mass of Easter. Around this trope and other similar ones (e.g. its imitation in the third Mass of Christmas) arose a tradition of church drama from at least the 10th century onwards, known rather loosely as ‘liturgical drama’ (see Medieval drama, §II, and fig.1). The basic dialogue is as follows (Young, i, p.210):
ANGELS:
Quem queritis in sepulcro, o Christicole?
MARYS: Ihesum Nazarenum crucifixum, o celicole.
ANGELS: Non est hic, surrexit sicut ipse dixit; ite, nunciate quia surrexit.
(Whom are you looking for in the tomb, you followers of Christ? Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified, O dwellers in Heaven. He is not here, he has arisen as he himself foretold; go and make it known that he has arisen.)
Various sources have been suggested from time to time for the words of the dialogue (the Gospel narratives, the antiphons and responsories of Easter) and to account for the fact of dialogue itself (the singing of the Passion in Holy Week); but no single source accounts for all its features. The music is similarly a free traditional composition – that is to say, newly composed in the traditional ‘neumatic’ style of Gregorian chant, using the same tonalities and melodic formulae. In addition to the standard melody found all over Europe, another melody appears in German sources from about 1200 (see Smoldon, 1946, with music example).
Some 14 manuscripts of the ‘Quem queritis’ can be dated as 10th-century; and of these probably the two oldest are those of St Martial of Limoges (F-Pn lat.1240, dated 923–34) and of St Gallen (CH-SGs 484, c950). These and other early sources are written in unheighted neumes but the pitches of the notes can often be deduced from later manuscripts (facsimiles of several versions are reproduced in Smoldon, 1969). Of the two versions just named, the later manuscript presents the simpler. Moreover, they are close in date to a famous description of an Easter ceremony which can with justification be called a Visitatio sepulchri play and which embodies the ‘Quem queritis’ dialogue: this is to be found in the Regularis concordia, the customary drawn up at Winchester in about 970. The co-existence of these three documents in the earliest period of its history argues conclusively against a simple chronological, or elaborate evolutionary, view of the ‘development’ of the ‘Quem queritis’ from liturgical trope to representational drama. Indeed, the term ‘variants’ is safer than ‘developments’. Both straightforward and highly complex forms of the dialogue are found throughout the period 900–1300. In some sources prefatory sung sentences (e.g. ‘Psallite regi magno, deuicto mortis imperio!’) and sentences to ease the transition to the introit ‘Resurrexi’ (e.g. the antiphon ‘Hodie resurrexit leo fortis’) are introduced. The sources also vary in the degree to which they rubricate the dialogue, and in the degree to which the rubrics indicate dramatic singing (i.e. by the assignment of singers to roles). In general, so long as the dialogue remains attached to the introit the variants are expressive of ‘liturgical rejoicing rather than a sense of drama’ (Young, i, p.213).
The elaborate ceremony prescribed in the Regularis concordia leads into the singing of the Te Deum and the ringing of bells (‘una pulsantur omnia signa’). This indicates that the ‘play’ was part of Matins (it followed the third lesson) and did not in this case precede the introit of the Mass. This and other considerations led Hardison (1965) to suggest that the ‘Quem queritis’ dialogue began its career as a Resurrection ceremony associated with the Vigil Mass, rather than as a trope – i.e. that it is a separate and independent ‘representational ceremony’. This conjecture, put forward on literary and liturgical grounds, was rebutted by Smoldon (1968), who brought forward evidence both palaeographical and musical to confirm the close connection between the dialogue and the Mass introit (see also Smoldon, 1980).
The Easter ‘Quem queritis’ is paralleled by a Christmas version (Young, ii, p.4, from F-Pn lat.887, 11th century):
MIDWIVES:
Quem queritis in presepe, pastores, dicite?
SHEPHERDS: Salvatorem Christum Dominum, infantem pannis involutum, secundum
sermonem angelicum.
(Shepherds, tell us whom you are looking for in the manger. Our Saviour, Christ the Lord, a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, as the angels told us.)
There are fewer extant examples of and less variety among the Christmas than among the Easter dialogues. The Christmas dialogue is a trope ending with the direction Psalmus ‘Puer natus est’ – the first three words of the introit for the third Mass of Christmas Day. The music, which differs decisively from that of the Easter trope, nevertheless displays some of the same motifs: the rising triad f–a–c' on ‘in se-pul[cro]’ and on ‘Na-zare[num]’ recurs on ‘in pre-se[pe]’ and ‘Chris-tum Do[mi-num]’. (The music of F-Pn lat.887 is transcribed in NOHM, ii, p.196; that of F-Pn lat.1118 in Smoldon, 1980, p.105.)
Both the Easter and the Christmas tropes, in their transferred position as part of Matins, underwent expansion and variation. At Easter the result was a group of para-liturgical plays, known collectively as Visitatio sepulchri; at Christmas the group is entitled the Officium Pastorum. Tropes in the ‘Quem queritis’ genre are found for the feasts of the Ascension and St John the Baptist; and one for the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin was dramatized at Santa Maria del Estany, in Spain, in the 14th century (Donovan).
For bibliography see Medieval drama, esp. Young (1933), Smoldon (1946, 1968, 1969, 1980), Rankin (1990), Hiley (1993) and Hardison (1965).
JOHN STEVENS