Jesuit theatre, Baroque theatre

J acobus Pontanus SJ Der letzte Vertreter in dieser Sammlung Deutscher Dichter der frühen Neuzeit verweist mit seiner Biographie und seinem Werk schon ins Barock und ist doch auch für die lateinische literarische Kultur des deutschen 16. Jahrhunderts -des Zeitalters der Reformation und Gegenreformation -repräsentativ. Das wird in dem Zusammentreffen der wichtigsten Handlungen deutlich, die er unternahm, bevor er an die Öffentlichkeit trat: Er latinisiert seinen Namen in gut humanistischer Tradition und wird dann Jesuit. Damit unterstreicht er als Person, daß der junge Jesuitenorden (gegr. 1540), die wichtigste Organisation der Gegenreformation, auf junge Humanisten große Anziehungskraft ausübte -auch Petrus Canisius (1521-1597), einer der ersten deutschen Jesuiten, war dem Format nach zuerst ein Gelehrter seiner Zeit, bevor er sein Können in den Dienst des Ordens stellte.

The First Jesuits’ College Theatre: from Rethoric to Drama

Jesuit education in the 16th and 17th century focuses on rhetoric as a cornerstone of Humanistic culture, and as practical ability, useful in diplomatic missions, preaching and court activities. College theatre is one of the most important playgrounds in which rhetorical competences are trained and refined, and, with all its spectacular and emotional implications, becomes a distinctive feature of Jesuit pedagogy all along the history of the Order.



Teatro Educativo de los primeros jesuitas: de la retórica a dramatización

La formación de los jesuitas, durante los siglos XVI y XVII se
centra en la retórica como una piedra angular de la cultura humanística, y sobre todo como una habilidad práctica, útil en las misiones diplomáticas, en la predicación y en diferentes momentos de la vida de la Corte. El teatro en las escuelas fue uno de los más grandes escenarios donde se practicaban y perfeccionaban las habilidades del habla, con todas sus implicaciones espectaculares y emotivas, que se convertirían en una característica distintiva de la pedagogía jesuítica a lo largo de la historia de la Orden.

Joseph Furttenbach the Elder (1591-1667) was a Swabian architect, scenographer and engineer as well as a collector and prolific writer. During his youth he spent twelve years in Italy, absolving a mercantile apprenticeship in Milan and Genoa. His interests in arts and techniques lead him to undertake extensive travels across the peninsula: in Florence he even met Galileo Galilei. Back in Swabia, he settled down as a magistrate and merchant in the imperial city of Ulm. Thanks to his cabinet of curiosities and his numerous treatises, during decades he played an important role in the transfer of Italian Renaissance and Baroque culture to the Holy Roman Empire. Kaspar von Greyerz, Kim Siebenhüner and Roberto Zaugg have published a critical edition of Joseph Furttenbach's diary (Lebenslauff, 1652-1664): an autobiographical text which provides fascinating insights into the daily life of a pious Lutheran, a member of the urban elite and a renowned scholar of seventeenth-century Germany.

This article briefly investigates how Jesuit performances brought a substantial contribution to the development of the theatrical art during the late Renaissance and early Baroque period. The discussion below does not intend to be exhaustive, nevertheless, it aims to offer a synthetic overview of the most important theatrical improvements introduced by the Jesuits during the period examined.

This review of scholarship on Jesuit humanistic literature and theater is Latin-oriented because the Society's sixteenth-century code of studies, the Ratio Studiorum, in force for nearly two centuries, enjoined the study and imitation in Latin of the best classical authors. Notwithstanding this well-known fact, co-ordinated modern scholarship on the Latin poetry, poetics, and drama of the Old Society is patchy. We begin with questions of sources, reception, and style. Then recent work on epic, didactic, and dramatic poetry is considered, and finally, on a handful of "minor" genres. Some genres and regions are well studied (drama in the German-speaking lands), others less so. There is a general scarcity of bilingual editions and commentaries of many "classic" Jesuit authors which would, in the first instance, bring them to the attention of mainstream modern philologists and literary historians, and, in the longer term, provide a firmer basis for more synoptic and synthetic studies of Jesuit intertextuality and style(s). Along with the interest and value of this poetry as world literature, I suspect that the extent to which the Jesuits' Latin labors in the vineyard of the classroom formed the hearts and minds of their pupils, including those who went on to become Jesuits, is underestimated.

Il Gigante, melodramma biblico pubblicato dal gesuita Leone Santi, anticipò alcune soluzioni sceniche dell'Erminia sul Giordano di Rospigliosi. Il testo fu uno degli esempi citati nel Corago come esempio di ottima versificazione. La lettura delle prefatoria fa intuire il dibattito gesuitico romano sulla liceità di rappresentare episodi biblici.

This thesis analyzes the reception of the Japanese mission in Europe, from the 16th to the 18th century. The discourse diffused in Europe started with a certain triumphalism, embodied by the Japanese Christians sent to Rome in 1585. However, when the local authorities began to prosecute and ban the new religion, it evolved to an imagery centered on the concept of “martyr". After that, this notion has been actively used to relate the Japanese Christian experience in modern Europe, and it was intimately linked to the religious and political thought of the time. The martyrs of Japan also gave, in 1627, the first beatification of saints from the “Indies”. This exceptional event, for both the Catholic church and the Iberian colonial empires, was only made possible by the integration of Japan in a determined word-view, where its leaders were regarded as tyrants, and not as uncivilized savages. The concrete transmission of such conceptions in the Old Continent was conducted by various means, such as paintings, sculptures and engravings, or literature, and theater. In the Jesuit plays, the Japanese martyrs became a topic in a literary genre essentially designed for public edification. All of this gave birth to an imaginary Japan that subsequently established itself in the minds of the time. Overall, this thesis shows that Japanese martyrs cannot simply be confined to the history of the Church or missionary orders. They have contributed significantly to the construction of European culture, particularly in its perception of its place in the world.

File contains only summary and Introduction. Check GoogleBooks for additional sample pages and OUP for companion website.
Opera in the Tropics is an exploration of theater with music in Brazil from the mid 1500s to the early 1820s. This book delves into the lives and practices of actors, singers, poets, and composers who created and performed Jesuit moral plays, Spanish comedias, and Portuguese vernacular operas and entremezes during the colonial period, as well as the Italian operas that celebrated the new independent nation in 1822. If a Brazilian producer claimed in 1825 that the purpose of musical theater was to instruct, entertain, and distract the population, this threefold goal had been present throughout the colonial period, at the hands of missionaries, intellectuals, bureaucrats, political leaders, and cultural producers. While the book demonstrates a continuity from Portuguese theatrical practices, primarily through the circulation of artists and repertory, it also examines a number of departures from the metropolitan model, particularly in the ethnic and gender profile of theatrical workers, in the modifications determined by local tastes, priorities, and materials, and in the political use of theater as an ideological and civilizing tool within the context of a slave society.

Resumo: Entre os missionários mais influentes na história da expansão na América do Sul encontra-se o espanhol José de Anchieta (1534-1597), que abordou as questões teológicas e culturais de como explicar a vida cristã aos Tupi. As suas peças do teatro eram escritas para reformar o guerreiro tupi e redireccionar a vida tupi dos vícios para as virtudes. Os palcos de Anchieta eram um campo de batalha para ganhar a fidelidade moral do tupi, onde Anchieta condescendeu em muitos aspectos do Catolicismo com o objectivo último de transformar o guerreiro tupi num guerreiro de Cristo. Académicos debatem se o teatro jesuítico nos séculos XVI e XVII era usado principalmente para a catequese ou se era usado para promover a cultura, vida e moralidade cristã. No entanto, o projecto jesuítico não visava separar a doutrina e a maneira de viver. Como as peças e os compromissos de Anchieta mostram, pregar a doutrina, ensinar a cultura cristã e manter a aliança com a coroa era possível em simultâneo.

On pourrait reconnaître dans ces premiers élans du poète jésuite toute la ferveur épique d’Ignace de Loyola, mais nous croyons aussi qu’ils renvoient l’écho d’expériences festives et spectaculaires qui imprégnèrent sa mémoire depuis son plus jeune âge.

Paper presented at the 14th Triennial Colloquium
of the Société Internationale pour l'étude du Théâtre Médiéval
Poznań, Poland, 22nd - 27th July 2013

The paper discusses the manuscripts and performance records of Edmund Campion's plays in Central Europe (Prague and Kalisz).

Jesuit drama constituted a substantial part of Neolatin drama and as such it is widely discussed in professional literature. The subject of this study are not Jesuit plays as such, but only their secondary parts, that means prologues, choruses, interludes and epilogues. It is based on practically unknown type of materials, namely the set of about 300 complete texts of school plays from Bohemian Lands. These plays, written by Jesuit teachers for their students, represent the most numerous type of Jesuit drama. However, since these texts were not meant to be printed, we nowadays know mostly only their titles and synopses. All the more valuable is thus the set of plays from the Bohemian Province, which were preserved in their entirety.
In the first party of the study, the ways the secondary parts have been defined by dramatic theorists are shortly outlined. Similarly to other literary theorists, Jesuits frequently referred to ancient authors, especially Aristotle, and adopted the complete system of ancient dramatic theory. At the same time, however, their works are firmly anchored in the baroque context. That applies to Jesuit school plays as well: eventhough they in many respects followed the ancient drama, they also absorbed influences from the contemporary theatre. Thanks to this combination, Jesuit drama evolved into a distinctive remarkable structure.

The study deals with 17th and 18th century Jesuit school dramas from Bohemian lands that were played in Jesuit colleges at the end of the school year. This event was initially connected with awarding the best students
and staging one play, performed by selected students from all the classes. By the 1670s, another practice prevailed in Bohemian, Austrian and Hungarian province: thenceforth, each class rehearsed a piece of their own.
The main purpose of this article is to compare three tragedies written in the 50s of the 17th century by Arnold Engel (1620–1690) with some plays from the 18th century and to show, if and how the mentioned change is reflected in the structure of the dramas and in their style.

La pratica delle arti performative nel contesto degli istituti di formazione d’età moderna assolveva a una funzione essenzialmente educativa: fondando le proprie radici nei dettami della “Ratio studiorum” gesuitica, il teatro e il ballo in particolare rappresentavano, com’è stato ampiamente rilevato, il risvolto applicativo dell’addestramento retorico, finalizzato all’acquisizione di valori, norme e modelli comportamentali ritenuti indispensabili per l’uomo che avesse voluto saper stare in società.
Gli studi sul teatro di collegio sono stati diretti soprattutto verso l’individuazione di un canone drammaturgico, formato da drammi composti tra gli ultimi decenni del sec. XVI e i primi del XVII da autori della Compagna di Gesù e selezionati sulla base della qualità letteraria e della loro rispondenza ai requisiti formali e tematici – la predilezione per il genere tragico, la preferenza per argomenti sacri o comunque edificanti, l’impiego della lingua latina – precisati dalla “Ratio” e dalla trattatistica di medesima matrice gesuitica. Eppure, a guardare meglio la produzione spettacolare dei collegi romani, facenti capo ai gesuiti ma non solo, emergono significativi scarti e vivaci anomalie rispetto al modello fissato dalla storiografia in materia. Un’atipicità che, d’altro canto, incoraggia a leggere l’esperienza dello spettacolo di collegio a Roma anche alla luce del teatro del tempo, delle specifiche forme drammaturgiche e delle tecniche performative che caratterizzavano il contesto teatrale romano del Seicento.
Adottando questa prospettiva metodologica, la relazione intende contribuire all’indagine sul sistema delle arti nella Roma di Paolo V discutendo alcuni esempi di spettacoli di collegio indicativi degli orientamenti intellettuali del tempo, nonché degli incroci e delle interferenze tra le eterogenee culture teatrali che convivevano in un ambiente, qual era quello romano, contraddistinto da un’elevata stratificazione culturale e da una spiccata internazionalità.

Antichrist reloaded: Orlando di Lasso’s choruses for the theatre, and the musical dramaturgy of the early Jesuit stage

The music of sixteenth-century Jesuit dramas has remained a grey area: contemporary descriptions focus on the staging of the dramas and their impact on the audience, while surviving musical pieces are often brief and simple, which sits oddly with the large-scale, festive performances staged at court or university, such as Orlando di Lasso’s contributions to Samson and Hester. Franz Körndle’s discovery that a group of late motets by Lasso was written for insertion in the drama Christus Iudex by the Italian Jesuit Stefano Tuccio allows us to study the contribution of the choruses to the overall dramaturgy, as well as the musical means Lasso employed to fit them to the dramatic situation and the practicalities of performance. The article traces the performance history of Christus Iudex from Rome to Graz and Olomouc, suggesting that Lasso’s choruses were possibly intended for an abandoned performance as part of the dedication of St Michael’s church in Munich.

Der Beitrag behandelt das Jesuitentheater in der Eidgenossenschaft im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert, mit dem Thema der zeitgenössischen Mission in Japan. Das Thema Japan weckte schon bei bekannten schweizerischen Kennern wie Peter Canisius und Renward Cysat Interesse. Japanische Themen waren im Jesuitentheater vor allem als heroische Märtyrersgeschichten nicht nur in deutschsprachigen, sondern auch in lateinischen Ländern sehr beliebt. Die schweizerischen Jesuitenschulen waren ein Treffpunkt dieser beiden Traditionen, in denen die Entwicklung der Märtyrerthemen deutlich verfolgt werden kann. In diesem Beitrag geht es besonders um die Geschichte von Rex Bungi ‒ ein Zyklus von Theaterstücken, der in Fribourg, Luzern und Wallis aufgeführt wurde. Durch Vergleich der verschiedenen Theaterstücke lassen sich die Sublimierung der Gewalt im theatralischen Martyrium und die Distanzierung vom Martyrium erkennen.

This article attempts to understand and analyse the reaction of the French and Roman authorities of the Society of Jesus at the onset of the renewal of dramatic activity in the eight small French jesuit seminaries between 1814 and 1828. The action undertaken starting in 1825 by Provincial Father Godinot and the General Father Fortis in favour of a better application of the rules of the Ratio studiorum can be interpreted primarily as the re-establishment of control over religious discipline, after the long interval of suppression. The frequent abuse that Jesuits had had to deal with was not dissimilar from that which had faced their predecessors when establishing a normative framework for theatre schooling practices at the end of the xvi and at the beginning of the xvii century. But the ban of dramatic representations to which they eventually resorted betrays a new set of challenges. Through this episode, one can see not only the complexity of the French political context within which the Jesuits, just tolerated, evolved, but also evokes the complex ways in which the Society envisages its own re-establishment. What theatre practice were desirable for the “new” Society, which would not be exactly the same as the “old” one? This article, in examining the fate of school plays also attempts to provide an answer to this question.

In the vast landscape of the history of the performing arts in baroque Rome, theatre and other entertainments in the context of the colleges take on primary importance, not only for the quality of the results – often at the level of productions in theatres and noble palaces – but above all for the role they played, beginning with the regulations in the Jesuit “Ratio studiorum”, in the moral and cultural education of college students. This study presents a preliminary section of a larger research project based on the documents from the archive of the Collegio Nazareno, aiming at reconstructing the material history of the performing arts’ practice in the college. Through an examination of accounting records and regulations regarding the ceremonial protocol for celebrations, academic gatherings, and ‘comedie’ (theatrical performances), the essay proposes a reflection on the relationship between theatre and the mechanisms of control governing the college.

"Il discorso "Al benigno lettore" che apre l’edizione dell’oratorio di Leone Santi intitolato "Il gigante" (Roma, Francesco Corbelletti, 1632) appare con alcune modifiche nella seconda edizione
della medesima opera ("Il David", Roma, Francesco Corbelletti, 1637) sotto il titolo, riportato nell’indice del volume, di "Discorso del Poetar Drammatico sopra gl’argumenti presi dalla sacra
Scrittura". Si tratta di un vero e proprio trattato di poetica che inquadra il testo dell’azione tragica all’interno del complesso dibattito letterario dei primi decenni del secolo, quando il
problema della ridefinizione del genere tragico assume una centralità indiscussa.
La prima versione del "Discorso" si presenta come una piccola enciclopedia della nuova tragedia, all’interno della quale trovano eguale spazio sia le dissertazioni sulla materia drammatica
che quelle sullo stile e la lingua tragici. Nell’introdurre il suo avviso ai lettori, l’autore dichiara di aver scelto quest’azione come «saggio di quello, che si potrebbe fare anche in questo genere
fin da gli antichi tempi tralasciato»: un genere in grado di fornire al mondo «grand’aiuto, e diletto», nella consueta prospettiva del "movere" et "delectare", a patto di eleggere a soggetto della poesia le «cose sacre». Lo spinoso problema dell’"inventio" è dunque risolto mediante l’adozione della categoria del «verisimile», estesa in maniera analoga anche alla scenografia (le lodate «scene finte con fuga di prospettiva» realizzate dai moderni) e, infine, al linguaggio.
L’attenzione allo stile è di fondamentale importanza in questa particolare riformulazione del paradigma tragico ottenuta attraverso la contaminatio di generi qualitativamente opposti quali
tragedia, commedia, elegia pastorale e poema eroico. Degno di nota è anche l’interesse dimostrato da Leone Santi per la questione della lingua, alla quale è dedicato un ampio paragrafo: il
gesuita senese sostiene l’«uso commune» come principio cardine del «parlare scenico» e coglie l’occasione per fornire qualche cenno lessicografico.
Nel rifacimento del 1637, invece, la veste del paratesto è abbastanza mutata. Il volume riceve l’"imprimatur" ed è aperto da una dedicatoria "Alli nobilissimi Giovani del Seminario Romano" a firma dello stampatore. Il "Discorso" mantiene nel complesso la struttura originaria, mentre il contenuto del dibattito si riduce al problema del verosimile. Le posizioni del Santi
sono sostenute attraverso costanti richiami a numerose auctoritates scritturali (gli evangelisti Matteo e Marco) ed ecclesiastiche (Gregorio Nazianzeno, con riferimento al "Christus patiens", S. Bonaventura, S. Avito ed altri), oltre all’Aristotele della Poetica e ai massimi auctores in campo poetico e linguistico quali Petrarca, Ariosto e Tasso."

The Jesuit order is well known for its educational use of theatre and other performing arts, and its activities in sixteenth-century Japan were no exception. However, Japanese Jesuit theatre underwent various changes over the course of the sixteenth century in response to pressures both internal and external. In the first twenty years of the mission (ca. 1550–1570), everyday parishioners of the churches of Kyūshū were encouraged to produce and perform songs, dances, and plays based on biblical and other legends, and the ceremonial presentation of such pieces before local lords was an important part of the Jesuit strategy to accomplish and then reward their conversions to Christianity. However, the 1570s saw growing opposition to the use of performing arts in a missionary context, and when the new Visitor Valignano arrived in Japan in 1579, an official statement from the Superior General in Rome all but prohibited performances involving lay brothers, in Japanese, or in churches. However, although Valignano and his subordinates at least stop reporting local performances of Christian drama, they nevertheless make muscial, choral, and dramatic instruction in Latin a focus of the education of young Japanese in the new Collegio. Meanwhile, Valignano himself was busy parading four such youths around Europe, where in addition to meeting kings and popes they studied European instrumental and choral music and took part in ceremonial plays dramatizing their own journey in the context of world history as the Jesuits conceived it. Thus, in 1590, upon the young ambassadors’ return to Japan, the stage was set for an exchange of concerts, plays, and dances, sponsored by Arima Harunobu, between the ambassadors and the students of the Collegio who had been studying the same arts in Kyūshū. In this presentation, I introduce this event from previously-undiscussed original documents.

we wrześniu 1912 roku, odbywały się na terenie dawnej Polski obchody trzechsetlecia śmierci Piotra skargi. główne uroczystości miały miejsce w krakowie (od 25 do 27 września), ale jubileusz odbił się szerokim echem także w miastach innych zaborów. krakowskie uroczystości skargowskie połączono ze zjazdem katolickim. Na łamach ówczesnej prasy już na kilka miesięcy przed rozpoczęciem obchodów apelowano o aktywne współuczestnictwo oraz zamieszczano praktyczne informacje organizacyjne (np. gdzie można kupić kartę wstępu, zamówić mieszkanie, nabyć obrazkowe iluminacje mające uświetnić okna każdego domu itp.). w licznych artykułach i szkicach okolicznościowych przypominano sylwetkę i twórczość skargi. Jak na jubileusz przystało, teksty te miały najczęściej charakter pochwalny, niekiedy w tonie wręcz ekstatycznym: gdy mowa o skardze, w oczach naszych staje postać natchnionego kaznodziei z obrazu matejki, jak w ekstazie oratorskiej rzuca gromy potężnego słowa na głowy swych słuchaczy.

With the revival of interest in the saint play in Western Europe, attention to plays associated with this genre in Central Europe, specifically in Poland, seems appropriate. Four such plays of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one of them in Latin, therefore will receive attention in the present study. However, preparatory to the plays which are the main topic of this article, I feel the necessity to take into account the non-theatrical or non-literary (liturgical and festive) forms of the cult of saints with reference to Poland. And in an attempt to recover for our study those traditional developments that were discarded by modernist aesthetics as unimportant because non-innovative, a generic question will be discussed: do these sixteenth- and seven­teenth-century plays belong to the same genre as the medieval saint plays?
For our purpose, three liturgi­cal forms of the cult of saints can be distinguished: regular pro­cessions on the saint’s feast day, special celebrations on extra­ordinary occasions such as beatification or canonization; and trans­lations of the saint’s relics. Certain rituals and customs developed around specific devotional traditions such as church bene­dictions that were ordained on saints’ days.

The early modern spectacle in Italy is known for its use of complex rhetorical systems of word, image and performance, employed together to communicate religious and political messages, and ultimately to achieve persuasion.  Due to their ephemeral nature, the scenographies, costumes and other elements featured in these events are somewhat elusive as objects of art historical inquiry.  What is left to us, in many cases, are engravings and written accounts, from which we must re-construct the event, its images, colours, sounds, smells, and the words and actions of the ritual.  In this paper I present commemorative pamphlets and engravings from several genres of spectacle in Milan and Rome in the seventeenth century.  Focusing on the  relationship of images with textual content, such as descriptive narrative, inscriptions, panegyric addresses and sermons,  my inquiry considers two functions of these printed commemorative materials: how they called upon the 'arts of memory' of those in attendance, and the imaginations of those who were not, in order to reproduce the experience of the event; and how they function as rhetorical devices in themselves and serve to disseminate the event and its significance across boundaries of time and distance.

In the late 16th Century Jacobus Pontanus wrote a comedy by the title Stratocles sive bellum (Stratocles or War). Pontanus (1542-1626) taught Rhetoric and Humanities at the Jesuit university of Dillingen (Bavaria) and at the Jesuit school St. Salvator in Augsburg. Topic of the play is to dissuade students from enrolling in the military.