Sint Servaas op de planken: De middeleeuwse legende in het twintigste-eeuwse massatoneel

Jan Załęcki

doi:10.18290/rh25735.9

Published : 2025-08-04

Vol. 73 No. 5 (2025)

Saint Servatius on Stage: The Medieval Legend in the Twentieth-Century Mass Theater

Jan Załęcki

https://orcid.org/0009-0000-7330-7618

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh25735.9

Abstract

The subject of the article is a 1916 drama by the Dutch clergyman and poet Chrétien Mertz (1883–1931), Spel van Sint Servaas (Play of Saint Servatius), the staging of which was part of a celebration dedicated to Saint Servatius and a pilgrimage to his relics located in Maastricht. The drama was based on the 12th-century Legend of Saint Servatius written by Hendrik van Veldeke, a poet from this region. The analysis focuses on Mertz’s work as an adaptation of the medieval work and as a medievalist phenomenon. The play emphasizes different plot elements than the medieval text: the title character is largely absent from the scene, and the stage action focuses primarily on the community of the inhabitants of Tongeren, where Servatius was a bishop, and on Maastricht. Mertz focalizes the motif of peace, whose presence in the medieval work is limited and makes it the main message of his work, appropriate in the historical context of the time. Mertz’s work has the character of a mass celebration and fits in with the contemporary trends in the theatre.

Keywords:

Chrétien Mertz, Hendrik van Veldeke, Heiligdomsvaart of Maastricht, medievalism, stage adaptation of medieval literature

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