03179cam a22003733u 4500 76609 UtSlPG 20260610134755.0 m cr n 260607r20251887utu|||||o|||||||||||||| d 39001721 UtSlPG fr iso639-1 PN Maugras, Gaston, 1850-1927 Les comédiens hors la loi Salt Lake City, UT : Project Gutenberg, 2025 1 online resource : multiple file formats text txt rdacontent computer c rdamedia online resource cr rdacarrier Release date is 2025-08-01 Laurent Vogel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.) "Les comédiens hors la loi" by Gaston Maugras is a historical account written in the late 19th century. It investigates why actors were long treated as socially and religiously suspect, tracing their status from sacred ritual origins through Roman infamy, Christian condemnation, medieval liturgy, and modern rehabilitation. Drawing on councils, laws, and vivid episodes, it clarifies how prejudice formed, persisted, and waned. This study will appeal to readers interested in theater history, church–state relations, and shifting cultural norms. The opening of the work frames the subject with the 1884 Saint‑Roch mass honoring Corneille, contrasted with the punishment of a Paris curé for a similar service in 1763, and cites a lively press debate to show how misunderstood the Church’s treatment of actors remains. The author sets out his plan to survey actors’ legal and religious status from Greece and Rome through the Middle Ages to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, listing key sources. He first shows the stage arising from religious rites—honored in Greece—then becoming infamous at Rome as performances passed to slaves and to mass entertainments of the circus, mimes, and pantomimes, despite their continuing pagan-sacral character and imperial favor. He then explains the early Church’s rationale for condemning spectacles and denying sacraments to performers unless they quit the stage, notes emperors’ mixed measures (including Justinian’s permission for converts to leave the profession), and describes the decline of theaters in the West under barbarian invasions while they endured in the East. Finally, the narrative sketches the medieval revival of drama within churches—liturgical plays for major feasts alongside the unruly Feast of Fools—before the excerpt breaks off. (This is an automatically generated summary.) Originally published: Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1887 Theater -- Moral and ethical aspects Theater -- France -- History Comédie-Française Actors -- Legal status, laws, etc. Actors -- France https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044087837282 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76609 117334 117334