A Reassessment of the Date and Provenance of the Cornish Ordinalia

Abstract

Though studies have focused on the language and the content of the Cornish Ordinalia, no one has been able to give definitive answers to the questions of where and when the text ofthat cycle originated, aside from observing that the Cornish language indicates a provenance somewhere in Cornwall. What emerges from a composite of previous attempts to date the text and discern its provenance is an unsubstantiated critical tradition of the Ordinalia' s origins. According to that tradition, the Ordinalia, a. religious trilogy comprised of a Creation play, a Passion play, and a Resurrection play, was written at Glasney Collegiate Church, Penryn, sometime between 1350 and 1375 and performed for a local Cornishspeaking audience.1 Though this speculation stands virtually without support from external historical sources, scholars allow these assumptions to govern discussions of the text. A reassessment of this established tradition, however, reveals that evidence within the cycle and external evidence from poll tax returns, bishops' registers, and other official records argue for a revised account of the cycle's origins. Although a Penryn provenance still lies within the realm of possibility, it is unlikely, as is a date for the cycle before 1370. The Ordinalia was more likely written between 1395 and 1419 by an ecclesiastic living in or near Bodmin in central Cornwall.

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