ABSTRACT
As religious works, the English mystery cycles of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance were, in their initial development, part of what might be called a spiritual reawakening in fourteenth-century England that expressed itself in a variety of activities and events including the promulgation of the Feast of Corpus Christi, an increased emphasis on preaching, confession, and penance, and the attacks of Wyclif and others on ecclesiastical abuses. That a Benedictine monk should author the Chester Plays, at least in their original form, is not surprising. The monks were, after all, the historians of the Middle Ages. Monasticism sustained the eschatological orientation of early Christianity and coupled this orientation with an interest in and a concern for individual perfection in the face of the inevitable drama of the last days. In contrast to scholasticism, monasticism emphasized spirituality instead of learning.
