The rich man and Lazarus on the Reformation stage

"The Rich Man and Lazarus," one of Jesus' best known parables, has been the subject of discussion and interpretation from the Church Fathers to the present day. Ten plays written in German during the sixteenth century dramatize this parable. Despite the fact that the parable and these plays are concerned with wealth and poverty, damnation and salvation - ideas that are at the very center of the social turmoil and theological struggles of the Reformation - the plays are virtually unknown, in part because six of the ten have not been reprinted or edited since they appeared between 1550 and 1579.