The allusions to it are frequent in the early literature of Christendom.
The soul of Christ comes to the gates of hell, and says: Undo your gates of sorwatorie; _place of sorrow._ On man's soul I have memorie; There cometh now the king of glory, These gates for to breke! Ye devils that are here within, Hell gates ye shall unpin; I shall deliver man's kin-- From woe I will them wreke.

_avenge._ * * * * * Against me it were but waste To holdyn or to standyn fast; Hell-lodge may not last Against the king of glory.
Thy dark door down I throw; My fair friends now well I know; I shall them bring, reckoned by row, Out of their purgatory! _The Burial; The Resurrection; The Three Maries; Christ appearing to Mary; The Pilgrim of Emmaus; The Ascension; The Descent of the Holy Ghost; The Assumption of the Virgin_; and _Doomsday_, close the series.

I have quoted enough to show that these plays must, in the condition of the people to whom they were presented, have had much to do with their religious education.
This fourteenth century was a wonderful time of outbursting life.
Although we cannot claim the _Miracles_ as entirely English products, being in all probability translations from the Norman-French, yet the fact that they were thus translated is one remarkable amongst many in this dawn of the victory of England over her conquerors.

From this time, English prospered and French decayed.

Their own language was now, so far, authorized as the medium of religious instruction to the people, while a similar change had passed upon processes at law; and, most significant of all, the greatest poet of the time, and one of the three greatest poets as yet of all English time, wrote, although a courtier, in the language of the people.