This weekend was my nephew's wedding, so I never dreamed I would take a trip back in time and see an actual piece of Medieval Theatre History come to life. As part of the festivities, we were going all over the place. In one of the clubs, there was a mandorla!
What, you are probably asking, is a mandorla? Well, it is a piece of scenery that they used during the days of medieval theatre that I have always wondered about and now have a pretty good idea of how it works!
Most of you probably know that when the Romans killed theatre, it was submerged in history for quite a few years. When it resurfaced, it was in the home of its archenemy, the church. (It was the Roman Catholics that did away with it...lol) The priests did all the services in Latin (even as late as when I was a girl in the 60s.)
In order to illuminate the Biblical stories for the locals, they began to do plays in the church aisles. Small pieces of scenery, called mansions, were sporadically placed among the pews and in the transepts of churches. Each mansion represented a place such as the stable in Bethlehem or Herod's throne room. The areas in between the mansions were called plateas (playing spaces). As the plays became more popular, the scenery became more elaborate.
One of the things that these peoples did, was create a representation of Heaven called a mandorla. This was a huge circular piece that hung from the ceiling, usually in the narthex (lobby). They would poke holes in the piece and using candlelight, which would shine through, created beams of light that would dazzle people as they walked underneath. Simple, right? It gets even better than that! They would hang children from this object dressed as cherubs or angels. There were generally twelve of them dangling there. Some say this represented the twelve tribes of Israel and other historians suggest it was symbolic of the disciples of Christ. I rather lean towards the latter, since the plays were mostly about the life of Jesus at this time. (These were called miracle plays, revolving around the miracles Christ performed. Other types of plays were mysteries about the lives of saints and morality plays which taught a lesson and revolved around personification of human traits.)
In any case, this madorla would hang about people to remind them of Heaven as the came into the mass. Amazing. Now the one I saw this weekend didn't have children suspended from it, thank God, but it was huge, with holes and was lit from within. It was truly like walking under a piece of Heaven.
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