The whole of medieval and early modern European religious theatre, on the standard scholarly account, traces back to four lines of Latin dialogue sung inside a stone church rather than performed in the street. The exchange begins with a question, quem quaeritis in sepulchro, whom do you seek in the tomb, put by a figure representing an angel to three women who came to Christ's tomb on Easter morning; they answer that they seek Jesus of Nazareth, crucified, and are told he is risen, is not here, go and announce that he has risen from the tomb. The earliest detailed instructions for staging this exchange survive in the Regularis Concordia, a customary of monastic practice compiled at Winchester under Bishop Aethelwold, datable to roughly the third quarter of the tenth century, drawing on manuscripts known collectively as the Winchester Troper. The instructions are specific: three monks, robed and carrying incense, approach an altar draped to stand for the tomb, where a fourth monk, seated and holding a palm branch, plays the angel's part.
Aethelwold's own stated purpose was not entertainment but instruction, strengthening the faith of unlearned worshippers by making the Resurrection visible rather than only spoken. Even in this minimal form, the ceremony already contains the basic elements of drama: assigned roles, a question and answer exchange, a change of costume and posture to mark a role, and a scripted movement through space. Because the instructions specify dialogue exchanged between distinct characters rather than a priest simply narrating scripture, historians of theatre treat this Easter ceremony, not any surviving Roman or Greek text, as the point where Western European drama restarts after antiquity, inside the church rather than despite it.