Thus in the centuries before Gregory the plain chant gained complete ascendancy in the church and under him it acquired a systematization which had in it the elements of permanency.
Yet it was through the adaptation of this very chant to the delineation of episodes in religious history that the path to the opera was opened.
The church slowly built up a ritual which offered no small amount of graphic interest for the eyes of the congregation.

As ceremonials became more and more elaborate, they approached more and more closely the ground on which the ancient dramatic dance rested, and it was not long before they themselves acquired a distinctly dramatic character.

It is at this point that the liturgical ancestry of the opera becomes quite manifest.

The dance itself, at first an attempt to delineate dramatically by means of measured movement, and thus the origin of the art of dramatic action, was not without its place in the early church.
The ancient pagan festivals made use of the dance, and the early Christians borrowed it from them.

At one time Christian priests executed solemn dances before their altars just as their Greek predecessors had done.