A Biblical Story for Two Stages: Abraham and Isaac in Fifteenth-Century Florence and York

Abstract

In the late Middle Ages, the Biblical biblical story of Abraham and Isaac formed an ideal platform to develop a discourse on absolute faith in God as well as on the hierarchical relationships within family and society. By considering how Feo Belcari’s Florentine sacra rappresentazione and the York Abraham and Isaac participated in — and contributed to — a broader and diversified ‘public theology’, this article argues that through the performance of dramas, lay people not only gained access to the Bible but also had agency in processes of appropriation and adaptation of its text and message. At the same time, it shows how these plays, as lay enterprises, were deeply embedded in the distinct fabrics of the societies that produced them.