For a long time, Jesuit theater was mainly regarded as an imperfect stage in the creation of true classical theater and as the antecedent or preparatory phase of a new dramatic genre; a set of texts lacking in originality whose only virtue was its contribution to the development of the modern theatrical universe. However, careful examination of such texts reveals that what first emerged as mere school experiments by erudite humanists destined for an elite group of disciples developed into public performances that had a major social impact. Rather than serving simply as an instrument for catechesis with an underlying moral purpose, the texts echo the political, moral, and religious controversies of the time, mirroring customs and institutions that naturally embody a distinctive view of the world, man, and the human order while also expressing the conflicting views of the Christian denominations in Europe.
Miguel Venegas (1529–after 1588) was not only the first dramatist in the Portuguese province of the Society of Jesus but also the crafter of an internationally acclaimed artistic and dramatic archetype dating from the earliest days of the Society, namely the tragedia sacra (sacred tragedy), whose biblical dramas, based on pagan literary models, formed a truly international and European repertoire.1 Moreover, assuming an independent existence of their own in this kind of theater, the choruses were also presented separately from the theatrical performances. Tragedia sacra plays and their characters gave rise to a tragic cycle produced by playwrights who would work on the same dramatic form, drawing inspiration from the same biblical sources. Venegas’s fame was so widespread that he was also deemed the author of some anonymous biblical plays, and his theater is therefore much more than an imperfect stage in the evolution of a distinctive literary genre. His works reveal the foundations of a unique dramatic poetics—tragic, sacred, biblical, musical, and rhetorical by definition—that makes Venegas the founder of Jesuit theater in Portugal and the creator of a genre gradually codified and emulated by successive generations of Jesuits. Hence the significance of a study on Venegas’s dramatic works and their genesis.
After the 1559 and 1562 performances in Coimbra, Venegas’s works achieved a remarkable international status. Although none of the plays were ever printed during the poet’s lifetime, his manuscripts (some of them anonymous) can be found scattered in libraries in several different cities around the world, not only in Europe—in Coimbra, Évora, Lisbon, Rome, Perugia, Messina, Bologna,
Examination of the manuscripts attesting to the Jesuit literary output, coupled with a systematic study of documentary sources in the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, has enabled me to take a fresh look at the origins of Jesuit theater on the basis of my long-standing research in this area, and to provide a detailed account of the founding stage of the Society of Jesus’s work in education. Significantly, the earliest tragedies performed in Italy, which were considered anonymous, are in fact the two great tragedies first staged by Venegas at the Colégio das Artes in Coimbra, which explains why copies can be found in collections of manuscripts attesting to the earliest dramatic plays performed in Rome, together with plays penned by Stefano Tucci (1540–97) and Bernardino Stefonio (1562–1620). Tragoedia cui nomen inditum Achabus (Tragedy entitled Ahab, or Ahab tragedy) was the first of Venegas’s tragedies to be performed in Rome, at the Collegium Germanicum in 1565; in the following year, students staged Saul Gelboeus (Saul on Mount Gilboa), first performed in Coimbra in 1559. After these two performances in Rome, Superior General Francisco de Borja (1510–72, in office 1565–72) was able to define the earliest guidelines for the genre.
A long series of performances would follow the 1565 production in Rome, drawing on the same biblical sources and tragic topoi. After 1559, therefore, Coimbra and Rome witnessed the birth of a new sacred dramaturgy: Coimbra was the location for the production and first performances of an archetype that Rome subsequently approved, taking the first steps toward encoding it into a regular dramatic activity whose forms were reshaped by scores of generations of Jesuits throughout Europe. This kind of theater, which the Society of Jesus welcomed and promoted from Rome and throughout Europe, was first called fabulae eruditae (erudite fables), and later tragoediae sacrae (sacred tragedies).
Chapters 1–2 deal with Venegas’s life and works, starting with his teaching period in Alcalá de Henares at the Colegio Trilingüe de San Jerónimo up to the time when he joined the Society (1554), then highlighting his career in Plasencia (1554–55), Lisbon (1555–59), Coimbra (1559–62), Rome (1563), and Paris (1564–66), which ended in his homeland, at the University of Salamanca, as a teacher of rhetoric (from 1568), and again at Alcalá de Henares. Having established Venegas’s biography, the sources of his dramaturgy are identified, as well as its tragic, sacred, biblical, and deep-seated (Senecan) rhetorical features.
Chapter 3 addresses Venegas’s academic, literary, biblical, and humanistic education while also revealing the close connection between his biblical theater, rooted both in the exegesis of the biblical text and the classical features of the tragic genre, and the philological training he received at the University of
Chapters 4 to 7 examine Venegas’s dramatic works against the background of Iberian Peninsula drama and highlight their importance for Jesuit and European dramaturgy. Finally, Chapter 8 explores a very specific feature of Venegas’s dramaturgy, namely the musical choruses. Composed by Francisco de Santa María (1532/38–97), the choruses of Achabus were revered by the musicians of the Holy Cross Monastery in Coimbra. A new musical genre, choruses for tragedies, was created, in which music was inextricably linked to words and had to reflect the rhetorical flow of the text. Although incomplete, the musical fragments from MM 70 in the Coimbra University Library stand out as the earliest known examples of music written for humanistic theater.
Thus, Miguel Venegas and the Earliest Jesuit Theater offers international scholarship a novel contribution that illuminates a historical phenomenon that has often been poorly understood due to the fact that the sources are in Latin and not readily accessible to the public. From a political standpoint, for example, the Achabus tragedy reveals interesting analogies with the crisis in national sovereignty experienced by Portugal in 1562. The dirges on King Achab’s death, whose victorious return had been expected by all, have almost prophetic overtones. From a more religious standpoint, Achabus reflects the bitterest controversies of the day involving Catholics and Protestants, such as human freedom versus the sovereign power of God, the doctrine on justification, the defense of repentance and works of penance, the glorification of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and other issues dealing with heresies and orthodoxy.
Any history of theater and the performing arts in modern Europe that fails to recognize the significance of Jesuit theater in Portugal, or confuses it with Jesuit theater in Spain, would deprive it of one of the most singular and illuminating chapters in the history of theater and its public impact.
As a supplement to this study, the reader may consult the Latin text of Tragoedia cui nomen inditum Achabus and the Portuguese version available on the CD-ROM that accompanies my Teatro nos colégios dos jesuítas: A Tragédia de Acab de Miguel Venegas S.I. e o início de um género dramático (séc. xvi) (Theater in Jesuit colleges: The Tragedy of Ahab by Miguel Venegas and the beginning of a dramatic genre [sixteenth century]).2
See below, “Venegas’s Tragedies and the Poetics of Sacred Tragedy.”