1 The Beginnings of Neo-Latin Drama in Italy, Germany and the Low Countries
The first humanist tragedy to be written was the Ecerinis (1314) by the Paduan statesman,1 diplomat and poet Albertino Mussato (1281–1329), for which he was crowned Poet Laureate.2 It was composed in the style and structure of Seneca’s tragedies, but without their mythological themes. Its protagonist is the ‘Tyrant of Padua’ Ezzelino III da Romano, who had died fifty-five years earlier. However, the play is not merely historical. As Grund shows, the portrait of the historical tyrant represents the Veronese tyrant Cangrande della Scala (1291–1329), who threatened Paduan sovereignty in the 1310s and 1320s.3 In fact, Mussato wrote the Ecerinis as a political intervention, a warning to his fellow citizens. The short play (629 lines) ends – unlike Seneca’s tragedies – with the chorus consoling the audience and warning them that justice will be done:
This rule of justice endures forever. Just men, trust in it! If one day fortune should happen to raise up some criminal, still the rule does not fail. Responsible for his works, each man gets what he deserves. The stern Judge, the mild Judge, is mindful of fair judgment; he rewards the just and punishes the unjust. The stable order never ends: virtue seeks the delights of heaven, misdeeds seek the darkness of hell. Therefore, be warned, and pay heed while you may to the unchanging law.5
In Italy, during these first steps of the Neo-Latin tragedy in the Tre- and Quattrocento, some other Senecan tragedies with mythological and historical themes were written.6 The Vicenza humanist, poet, philologist and historian Antonio Loschi (c.1368–1441), for example, chose a Greek hero of the Trojan War for his Achilles (c.1390).7 In this revenge tragedy, as in Seneca’s Oedipus, Achilles and the others are completely at the mercy of fate.8 The third one is the Progne (1427/8) by the Venetian humanist and cleric Gregorio Correr (1409–1464).9 Its theme is the rape of Philomela by the Thracian king Tereus, based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses 6, but above all on Giovanni Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum gentilium 9 (‘On the Genealogy of the Gods of the Gentiles’, first version completed in 1360). Philomela is able to tell the truth to her sister Procne, the wife of Tereus. In revenge, Procne and Philomela kill Tereus’ son Itys and serve his corpse to his father. Within this plot, the tragedy draws some inspiration from the scene in Act IV of Seneca’s Thyestes in which Atreus sacrifices Thyestes’ two children and gives them their father to eat. The fourth example is Leonardo Dati’s (1408–1472) political play Hiensal (1441/42).10 It is based on an episode from Roman history, the killing of his two rivals by Jugurtha, King of Numidia, as told by Sallust in the Bellum Iugurthinum (‘War of Jugurtha’). Its theme is the destructive power of jealousy. All four plays depict a world doomed to destruction by human violence.11
The writing of tragedy was interrupted for about fifty years. Then, in Rome, Neo-Latin tragedy was revived, as part of a resurgence of ancient drama, in the Accademia Romana of Giulio Pomponio Leto (1428–1498).12 In the 1470s its members performed ancient plays. New tragedies were written in the 1490s, when Carlo Verardi (1440–1500) and his nephew Marcellino Verardi published their history plays Historia Baetica (‘History of Baetica [Andalusia]’, 1492) and Fernandus servatus (‘Ferdinand Preserved’, 1493) respectively.13 Both tragedies, which are closer to medieval forms than to classical structures, deal with Ferdinand II of Aragon, King of Spain. The Historia Baetica, a tragedy in hexameters, tells of the king’s conquest of Granada and victory over the Moors in 1492, whereas the prose dialogue Ferdinandus servatus recounts an unsuccessful assassination attempt in December of the same year. The preference for a Spanish theme may be related to the election of Pope Alexander VI, who was born in Valencia and to whom the play was presented. A novelty was that it was called a tragicomoedia, because of its happy ending: Ferdinand survived the attack.
Although a few other Latin tragedies were written in Italy, the writing of Latin tragedy on the peninsula declined, and the Italian language took over, as did comedy. Latin drama was revived, so to speak, at the end of the Quattrocento when the Accademia Romana performed plays by Plautus and probably also by Terence. In 1480 and 1484 Plautus’ Asinaria (‘The Comedy of the Ass’) and Aulularia (‘The Pot of Gold’) were performed on the Quirinal.14 Roloff tells us of the splendour of the performance of Plautus’ Poenulus on 14 September 1513 in Rome.15
As far as we know, Petrarch (1304–1374) was the first to write a comedy in the style of Plautus and Terence. From this play, now lost, we have only a title (Philologia, c.1336), the names of three characters: Philologia, Philostratus and Tranquillinus, and one sententia: maior pars hominum expectando moritur (‘the majority of people die while waiting’).16 It may have been an allegorical play inspired by Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (‘The Marriage of Philology and Mercury’). It was probably written in the metre of iambic senarii, as the metre commonly used in Roman comedy consisting of six (senarius) iambs per Latin line. Fifty years later, in Bologna, Pier Paolo Vergerio (1370–1444) wrote the comedy Paulus (c.1390) about a lazy student of the same name.17
Another allegorical comedy – written in prose – was Philodoxeos fabula (‘Play of the Lover of Fame’, c.1425) by the northern Italian lawyer and humanist Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472); the plot revolves around Philodoxus’ love for a girl called Doxia (‘Fame’).18 He succeeds in his attempts to win her, despite problems. On a literal level, the plot resembles the intrigues of classical Roman comedy. Allegorically, the play expresses the idea that virtue, with the help of Prudence and Industry, triumphs over fortune and achieves true glory.19
In Venice Thomas Medius or Tommaso Mezzo (second half of the fifteenth century) wrote a play in the style of Roman comedy, Epirota (1483), about a love story in Syracuse.20 Two decades later, in 1505, Plautus imitations were published in Rome: Comoedia Bophilaria and Comoedia Annularia by Aegidius Gallus or Egidio Gallo (first half of the sixteenth century). The most celebrated comedy, however, was Stephanium (c.1500) by Johannes Harmonius Marsus or Giovanni Armonio Marso (c.1477–c.1553), performed in the Venetian church of Santo Stefano.21 Its setting was Athens. The Argumentum gives an idea of the play, which was inspired in its structure, style and theme by Plautus’ fabula palliata (comedy in the Greek manner) Aulularia (‘The Pot of Gold’, ‘L’Avare’):
In this comedy, a Greedy Old Man [Hegio] urges his son [Niceratus] that it is time for him to sail to Africa. The son dislikes this plan because of his love for a courtisan [Stephanium] whom he has been suppporting since abducting her from Lesbos. She is engaged to him after they have received signatures from both sides and she has found her uncle [Philodicus] in Lesbos. The old man, worrying too much, fell ill. Meanwhile, the slave Geta steals the gold. When the old man finds out, he beats him. Then the uncle arrives, and the old friendship soon brings about a marriage.
So Neo-Latin tragedy from Italy, which was predominantly academic and literary of nature, was oriented towards Seneca’s tragedies in terms of structure and style, yet it chose historical subjects, exploring themes of fate and human violence, and Neo-Latin comedy there was influenced by ancient Roman comedy, blending classical and allegorical elements.
The genre was not confined to Italy. Law students from all over Europe, but especially from the German-speaking countries, who went to Italy as the centre of new learning and the legal study, brought familiarity with Roman comedy and tragedy to the countries north of the Alps.23 This once more demonstrates the importance of lawyers in humanism. The knowledge of Italian Latin drama in the German lands is also evidenced by the publication in Germany of dramata from Italy such as Leonardo della Serrata’s Poliscena (1478) and Mezzo’s Epirota (1483).24
Knowledge of Greek had almost disappeared in the Middle Ages, so Greek comedy and tragedy only became better known after they were translated, into Latin or into the vernacular, and after more people were able to read Greek.25 There was a fertile ground for the new genres in an empire that saw itself as a continuation of the ancient Roman Empire, viz. the Holy Roman Empire, to which the Netherlands belonged. There, ecclesiastical and secular rulers wanted to employ secretaries and scribes who could write ‘modern’, i.e. classical Latin, and humanists who wanted to be at the forefront of the ‘new learning’ could provide the appropriate training. The humanist schoolmen in the German Empire and the Low Countries turned the more ‘academic’ drama of Italy into an educational tool. It was in these countries that Neo-Latin drama experienced its most striking development.26
This phase of Latin drama in Germany was a time of experimentation and development. The first Neo-Latin plays were little more than prose dialogues, such as the short prose dialogue Comoedia Bile, which the Heidelberg Professor of Latin Peter Luder (1415–1472) brought back from Italy in the mid-fifteenth century. In his inaugural lecture of 1456, which was considered the first public plea for humanism in Germany, the same Luder emphasised the didactic value of Terence’s comedies as a ‘school of morals’.27 This approach may have been inspired by Donatus’ fourth-century commentary on Terence, which was rediscovered in Mainz in 1433 by the Italian historian and philologist Giovanni Aurispa.28 Other Latin comedies from Italy such as Leonardo Bruni’s Poliscena and Leon Battista Alberti’s Philodoxeos fabula were read, analysed and recited (but not yet staged) in Heidelberg.29
Another early Latin drama, Jacob Wimpfeling’s Stylpho (1480), also occupies a middle ground between a dialogue and a play.30 It was printed separately as a drama fifteen years after Wimpfeling delivered it as part of a graduation address at the University of Heidelberg in 1480. The play consists of an argumentum (‘summary’), a prologue, six scenes and a farewell. Its theme is student life: the lazy student Stylpho shows his ignorance at the University of Heidelberg and to the Bishop of Worms, Johann von Dalberg (1445–1503), the centre of the humanist circle in Heidelberg. Like the prodigal son in the parable of Jesus (Luke 15:11–32), the student becomes a swineherd, however without being saved by grace.31
The life of Wimpfeling (1450–1528) illustrates the importance of Alsace-Lorraine for the cultural exchange of humanism: born in Sélestat, he became a professor of rhetoric and poetry in Heidelberg, and he lived for a time in Strasbourg before returning to his native town. It was mainly in this region that southern and northern European humanism came into contact and exchanged ideas.32
The prose comedy Codrus (printed in 1485) by Johann Kerckmeister (c.1450–c.1500) also deals with school life: the rector of the Münster gymnasium, the ignorant Prussian Latin teacher Codrus is ridiculed for speaking a barbaric form of Latin.33 The play thus thematizes the contrast between the new humanist education and medieval culture. Moreover, these examples show once more that the distinction between dialogue and drama was fluid: these plays had a Plautine and Terentian ‘plaudite-formula’ (‘if you liked the play, please applaud’). On the other hand colloquies – prose dialogues – written by Erasmus were performed.34
It was Johann Reuchlin (1544–1522) who began the tradition of writing a Neo-Latin comedy in verse with his Scaenica progymnasmata or Henno (1498).35 This Henno is a farce about a peasant couple who cheat and steal from each other, and are themselves robbed by a slave who eventually marries their daughter and receives the stolen money as a dowry. In a court scene the lawyer has the slave Dromo answer every question with ‘bleeh’, to give the impression that he is not compos mentis, a motif borrowed from the French farce Maitre Pathelin. The slave then tricks the lawyer with the same answer. Reuchlin performed it to an audience in Heidelberg in 1498 at the house of Johann von Dalberg. The comedy has some features of ancient comedy, such as the metre of the iambic trimeter, which was a novelty, since ancient Roman comedy had hitherto been considered to have been written in prose. It is not, however, a fully Terentian or Plautine play. Unlike these two playwrights, the author added chorus songs after the first four acts, in medieval rhymed verse.36 After the second act the chorus, accompanied by a flautist, sings in praise of (humanist) poets, referred to as poetae, prophetae and vates:
The songs of the poets are worthy of Apollo. Under his divine will the poets shine. Therefore, let us love the heavenly sacred poets whose theatre plays we elegantly show.38
Reuchlin’s play achieved considerable fame. In the Low Countries Reuchlin inspired the humanist headmaster and Brother of the Common Life (living in the tradition of the Devotio moderna) Georgius Macropedius (Joris van Lanckvelt, 1487–1558) to write comic plays with choruses in similar verses and action parts in iambic trimeters for his students at the Latin schools of Den Bosch and Utrecht.39 He was a prolific author of farces in the style of Reuchlin, for instance Aluta (the Dutch name ‘Aaltje’, written in the 1510s, printed in 1535), in which the husband is called Heino (Hein; cf. Reuchlin’s Henno), comedies about school life, such as the successful Rebelles (written in the 1510s, printed in 1535) and biblical dramas, such as Lazarus mendicus (‘The Beggar Lazarus’, 1541), based on the famous parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31), Asotus (written c.1507, printed 1537), based on the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32), named after the expression
Why Reuchlin, Macropedius and others included choruses can only be guessed, but the influence of Seneca and the chorus songs in his tragedies may have played a part, as well as adding to the liveliness of the performance and the desire to have more students perform before an audience that included the students’ parents. In addition, the fourth-century grammarian Euanthius had argued in his De fabula (‘On Drama’) that comedy originated in the chorus, whose role was later reduced and even eliminated, an error that the humanists may have wanted to ‘correct’:42
Comoedia vetus ab initio chorus fuit paulatimque personarum numero in quinque actus processit. Ita paulatim uelut attrito atque extenuato choro ad nouam comoediam sic peruenit, ut in ea non modo non inducatur chorus, sed ne locus quidem ullus iam relinquatur choro.
The old comedy was originally a chorus and gradually, with an increasing number of characters, developed into five acts. Thus, as the chorus was gradually diminished and worn away, comedy reached such a new form that not only was the chorus no longer introduced, but no place at all was left for it.
Macropedius may have been the first to write a biblical comedy, but it was Gulielmus Gnapheus (Willem de Volder, or van de Voldersgraft, 1493–1568) who was the first to publish such a comedy on a biblical theme, thus creating the genre of the comoedia sacra.43 He wrote his play Acolastus: De filio prodigo comoedia (‘The Dissolute: A Comedy on the Prodigal Son’) for a performance by his students in The Hague in 1528. In 1529 he had to flee from the Netherlands because of his Lutheran sympathies and went to Elbing and later to Königsberg. The play was a great success: by 1587, after the first Antwerp edition of 1529, it had been printed about fifty times, and it was performed many times throughout Europe, in Latin or in translation. For example, the Danish rector of the Latin school in Ribe, Peder Hegelund, performed Acolastus in a Danish translation in June 1571, and the Haarlem rector Cornelius Schonaeus did so in the Latin original in the autumn of 1578.44 It was performed at Trinity College in Cambridge in 1561–1562.45 Also in England, John Palsgrave had written a school edition with a translation and notes, which was published in 1540.46 The Parisian humanist Gabriel Dupreau or Prateolus (1511–1588) wrote an ‘intertextual’ (i.e. citing Terentian and Plautine parallels) and theological-moral commentary, published in 1554.47 The following year, in June 1555, Pedro Pablo de Acevedo (1522–1573) adapted the play for the inauguration of the new school in Córdoba, Spain.48 Another token of the success of the Acolastus is the fact that Sixt Birck in his Prologue to his Susanna (1535) referred to it for an audience that apparently was familiar with it:
The old men are more corrupt than even those introduced by Terence or Plautus. Both wretched men are wallowing in nefarious lusts. Will Acolastus please the audience more? I think so.
In short, the play had a great resonance, especially in the German-speaking world, but certainly not limited to it. In addition to this successful play, Gnapheus wrote two other ones: Morosophus, de vera ac personata sapientia comoedia (‘The Foolish Wise, a Comedy about True and Feigned Wisdom’, 1541) and Hypocrisis (1544), against the hypocrisy of the Roman Catholic Church.50
Gnapheus’ Acolastus and, to a lesser extent, Macropedius’ Rebelles – about two naughty boys spoiled by their mothers’ overindulgent upbringing but rescued by the schoolmaster, which was printed fourteen times and translated into German twice – inspired Christoph Stummel or Stymmelius (1525–1588) to write Studentes in 1545 while still a student in Frankfurt an der Oder.51 He transposed the setting of Roman comedy – often in Greece – to the everyday life at a German Latin school. Three students, Philomathes (‘Lover of Study’), Acrates (‘Weakling’) and Acolastus (‘Dissolute’), represent diligent study, greed and sexual lust respectively. Philomathes remains diligent; the other two return home repentant. From its first edition in 1549, the play was a huge success, as evidenced by its twenty-one editions published in places such as Frankfurt an der Oder, Cologne, Antwerp and Stettin, its many translations, including a Swedish one, and its many performances, such as the one in Turku in 1640 on the occasion of the inauguration of the university, about a century after its first performance.
Why was Acolastus so popular? Gnapheus stayed close to the biblical parable of Luke 15:11–32, but he delighted in the phrase from verse 13, in the Vulgate translation: vivendo luxuriose (‘living in luxury’), by including some tavern scenes and some characters in imitation of Roman comedy. The play thus presented entertaining scenes, protected by the licence to show them by the moral warning they implied. Moreover, although the parable is about God’s grace – the prodigal is warmly received after his repentance – and ‘grace’ was one of the shibboleths of Lutheranism, Gnapheus’ treatment of the theme is not Protestant, but rather generally Christian. In addition, Gnapheus made visible the personal choices of the youngest son. The Prodigal is a schoolboy of a similar age to the students who read and performed it, and its theme can be related, for example, to Terence’s Adelphoe (‘Brothers’) on proper education. The language is also close to Terence’s, which was the model for Latin conversation. Unlike Macropedius’ Asotus, the play has no chorus songs, which is one of the indications that it was not directly inspired by Reuchlin’s play. The reason that Asotus did not achieve the same level of fame may lie in the renown of the previously published Acolastus.
Another popular Latin drama from the Low Countries was the Euripus, tragoedia Christiana (1549) by the Louvain Minorite priest Levinus Brechtus (1515–1560).52 Euripus is named after the river Euripus, which separates the Greek island Euboea from the mainland and was proverbial for inconsistency because of its many tides, something Brechtus could have known from Erasmus’ Adagia, where ‘Euripus’ (‘vacillating man’) is explained as: ‘Man’s a Euripus, is to be used of those who are changeable and of no settled character. It will also be suitable for changes of fortune, which sweeps mortal affairs to and fro in a sort of tide …’.53 In this ‘Christian tragedy’ the protagonist loses his salvation by allowing himself to be led astray by Venus and Cupid as servants of the Devil. Ignoring the warnings of Timor Dei (‘Devotion to God’) and Tempus Gratiae (‘Time of Grace’) he is struck by Mors (‘Death’), and Devils lead the mocked and despised Anima Euripi (‘Soul of Euripus’) into hell.
Alongside such Christian fabulae other plays were written, such as Jacob Locher’s prose play Ludicrum drama plautino more fictum … de sene amatore (‘A Playful Drama in Plautine Style … about an Old Lover’, 1502), which is an Epilogue to Plautus’ Asinaria (‘The Comedy of the Ass’), a comedy about affairs and money.54 The same Locher (1471–1528), following in the footsteps of Italian humanists such as Verardi, wrote plays about contemporary political events, such as Historia de rege Franciae (‘History of the King of France’, 1495) about the battle of Naples fought by Charles VIII, and the Tragoedia de Thurcis et Suldano (‘Tragedy on the Turks and the Sultan’, 1497). These plays, or rather prose dialogues, are divided into five acts and have choruses. In addition to a Plautus Epilogue and history plays, Jacob Locher also wrote an allegorical piece: Spectaculum de iudicio Paridis (‘Spectacle of the Judgement of Paris’, 1502), which was performed in Ingolstadt. Three students discuss the best way of life: the active life (represented by Juno), the contemplative life (Pallas Athena), or the life of pleasure (Venus). They opt for the vita contemplativa.
In Bavaria and in Vienna festival plays were written, the most famous of which is the Ludus Dianae (1501) by the eminent German humanist Conrad Celtis (1459–1508).55 In this play the Greek deities Diana, Bacchus, Sylvanus and a Silenus pay tribute to the imperial couple Maximilian I and his wife Bianca Maria Sforza. It is, so to speak, a performed epithalamium (‘song for the bride’). As befits a festival play, there is music, dance and choruses.
The Ludus Dianae may have political implications. Another historical – and political – drama is the Ludus Martius sive bellicus (‘Play of Mars or War Play’, 1526) by the sixteenth-century Cologne headmaster Hermannus Schottenius Hessus or Hermann Schotten (c.1503–c.1543).56 Its subject is the horrible Peasants’ War (1524–1526), which makes it a dramatization of a class conflict – this war was a revolt of peasants and burghers on social and religious grounds. However, in its general treatment of this war without detail, it is also a pamphlet propagating Erasmus’ irenicism, including several quotations from his Querela pacis (1517). In this irenic tone the Catholic author did not use the subject for anti-Lutheran polemics. The educational context is evident in the many quotations of and allusions to classical Latin poets and the Vulgate translation of the Bible.
In summary: Neo-Latin drama, starting in Italy, was circulated throughout Europe, particularly in German-speaking regions and the Low Countries, due to law students from Germany and other countries studying in Italy, who brought with them both Italian humanism and knowledge of Italian Latin drama, and flourished there. The Holy Roman Empire, valuing classical Latin for administrative and educational purposes, provided a fertile ground for these plays. The humanist teachers transformed academic drama into an educational tool, emphasising its moral and didactic value. This Latin drama, too, demonstrates that the rather ‘civic’ humanism of Italy transformed into a more ‘Christian’ humanism in the Holy Roman Empire. The genre evolved from simple prose dialogues into structured plays, incorporating classical elements such as metre and choruses. Comedy and tragedy were used for moral instruction, biblical storytelling and even political commentary. Works such as Reuchlin’s Henno and Gnapheus’ Acolastus gained international recognition. While rooted in classical traditions, these plays blended classical, medieval and Renaissance elements, shaping an enduring theatrical tradition.
2 Reformation Germany and the Low Countries
The publication of the 95 Theses by the Wittenberg professor of moral theology Martin Luther (1483–1546) in 1517 marked the formal beginning of the Reformation, although there had been criticism of the Roman Catholic Church before this event.57 Schoolmasters within Protestantism (several movements – including Lutheranism – that sought to reform the Church) soon used drama, especially biblical drama, to achieve their educational goals. Biblical dramas had already been written during the first period of humanist drama, and these Protestant writers continued this tradition. The Latin theatre remained oriented towards classical models, but their vocabulary shifted from the Church, good deeds and sacraments towards grace and free will. It turned out Catholic drama was more consistent in its vocabulary than drama of the Protestant Reformations with its many currents.58
The Reformation forced people to take a stand and appealed to personal choice and responsibility.59 These choices were readily expressed in Latin dramas. Because Gnapheus and Macropedius wrote their plays from a generally Christian perspective, rather than from one side of the great divide between the Reformation and Roman Catholicism, their plays were popular with Protestant and Roman Catholic teachers alike. They drew on Roman comedy, and, as Roloff notes, such dramas made it: ‘possible to portray the psychological processes conditioned by the new ethos through typical human characters’.60 However, since Neo-Latin drama did not aim to provide deep psychological portraits, these ‘psychological processes’ must be taken somewhat lightly. In addition to biblical dramas, the humanists of this period wrote farcical comedies and allegorical plays.
In contrast to Macropedius and Gnapheus, the German Protestant humanist and playwright Thomas Naogeorgus or Kirchmeyer (1511–1563) used drama for fierce polemics against Roman Catholicism.61 A translator of Sophocles, he was inspired by both Roman comedy and Greek tragedy. Two of his plays became very famous. The first is the Tragoedia nova Pammachius (‘New Tragedy: The One Who Fights against Everything’, 1538), which in four acts depicts the millennial development of the Church as a great world-historical process. The battle of the Church begins with the baptised emperor Julian the Apostate, who opposes the Church, with Pammachius (i.e. the Pope), who allies himself with Satan, and ends – temporarily – with the battle between Roman Catholicism and the Reformation. After the fourth act an Epilogue announces that the struggle will continue until the Final Judgement. The play is both historical and allegorical: the historical emperor Julian is an allegorical type of all emperors, and Pammachius represents both the papacy (‘papatus’) and the Antichrist alike. Naogeorgus thus follows Luther in equating the Pope with the Antichrist. The play was received well in England: in Oxford, a 1545 performance of Pammachius in Christ Church, or an edition of the text, may have inspired John Foxe’s Christus triumphans (‘Christ Triumphant’, 1556).62
Naogeorgus’ second well-known play is Mercator (‘Merchant’ 1539) or, in full, Tragoedia alia nova Mercator seu iudicium (‘Another New Tragedy, the Merchant or the Judgement’).63 Here, Naogeorgus uses the Everyman theme from Christianus Ischyrius’ or Christiaan Stercken’s Homulus (1536) and Macropedius’ Hecastus (1539) to present Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith. Mercator is a merchant in pursuit of earthly goods, who can only free himself from a guilty conscience by believing in the redeeming death of Christ on the cross (the Lutheran sola fide principle), not by good works. On the contrary, the three ‘papists’ are condemned to eternal death despite their bona opera, while Mercator is saved by his conscientia and his faith. The play was very successful, and, as Roloff states: ‘The Mercator is the true great Reformation comedy in the spirit of Aristophanes’, the acerbic Greek comedian.64 Naogeorgus has the chorus end the play polemically: Papatus pereat … Papatus cecidit. Plaudite fortiter (‘Let the papacy perish … the papacy has fallen. Applaud loudly’). Although their style resembles that of comedy, he calls his plays tragoediae, because of their sad endings: Pammachius and Mercator both perish.
Luther propagated the performance of comedies, as he wrote in his Tischreden (Table-Talks). It would teach schoolboys good Latin and good manners. In the preface to Tobias (in his translation of the Bible), he wrote:
Vnd Gott gebe | das die Griechen jre weise | Comedien vnd Tragedien zu spielen | von den Jüden genomen haben | Wie auch viel ander Weisheit vnd Gottesdienst etc. Denn Judith gibt eine gute | ernste | dapffere Tragedien | So gibt Tobias eine feine liebliche | gottselige Comedien.65
May God grant that the Greeks learned their way of performing comedies and tragedies from the Jews, just as other insights, religious ceremonies, etc. Then Judith is the proper subject matter for a serious, heroic tragedy; Tobias provides the plot for a gentle, devout comedy.66
For Luther and for the Protestant humanist schoolmasters, drama served moral-didactic purposes in civic education. And it helped that Luther – following Augustine – suggested in this preface that the Greeks had inherited their literature from the Jews, implying that, if the Holy Bible contained religious drama, the humanists could follow that example without being in conflict with their faith.
Another Protestant play is Theophania (‘Theophany’, 1560) by the Bavarian musician and Protestant theologian Nicolaus Selnecker (1530–1592).67 The full title of the play is: Theophania, comoedia nova et elegans, de primorum parentum conditione et ordinum, sive graduum in genere humano institutione (‘Theophany [Appearance of God], a New and Elegant Comedy on the Institution of the Condition of the First Parents and of the Ranks or Stages in the Human Race’). Eve regrets her fall, which has led to crime, the wrath of God and eternal death. While Adam tries to console her, her grief is exacerbated by Cain, who neither obeys nor worships God. God comes down and degrades him, and sets the order of humanity: Cain will be subject to Abel. On his return to heaven, God promises his help to the pious and consoles Eve (Post haec Deus promittit auxilium suum | Piis, Euam solatur, et in caelum redit, ‘After these events God promises his help to the faithful, he consoles Eve and returns to heaven’; Theophania, Prologus, end). Roloff sees this play as a transitional piece, in which ‘the playful element outweighs the moral lesson’ and ‘humanist education, Protestant conviction and bourgeois milieu are united’.68
Xystus Betuleius or Sixt Birck (1500–1554) was an important playwright in Protestant Germany.69 His biblical comedies were intended for use at Latin schools as well as for moral and political education. For instance, his Iudith (1535), about the brave Israelite Judith who beheads the Assyrian enemy Holofernes, is for him an example of good government and the just warfare against the Turks (exemplum rei publicae recte institutae, unde discitur quomodo arma contra Turcam sint capiendo). He wrote this biblical drama from the deuterocanonical Book of Judith – and four other Latin dramas – during his time in Augsburg, one of the main centres of Protestant Latin playwriting. During his earlier time in Basel (1530–1535), he had written six plays in German. He was not the only bilingual author.
Another major centre for Neo-Latin drama in Germany was the (Protestant) Strasbourg Academy, founded in 1538 and directed by Johann Sturm (1507–1589).70 Sturm, who had studied in Louvain, strongly advocated the performance of Greek and Latin plays: classical Greek and Roman comedies and tragedies as well as Neo-Latin ones.71 During his rectorship, Jacob Schöpper’s (1512/16–1554) Ectrachelistes sive Johannes decollatus (‘The Decapitator or the Beheading of John the Baptist’, 1544) was performed in 1565, and George Buchanan’s Iephthes sive votum (‘Jepthah, or the Vow’, 1554) was staged some years from 1567, either in Latin or in the German translation by Jonas Bitner. The Silesian Georgius Calaminus or Georg Röhrig (1567–1595) saw his Carmius sive Messias in praesepi (‘Carmius, or the Messiah in a Cradle’) performed at this Academy in 1576, when he was already a professor in Linz. It is a drama in the style of Virgil’s fourth Eclogue about the birth of a saviour-child, this time with the shepherd Carmius as one of the characters. As McFarlane notes, Protestant plays in the style of Terence were popular in Strasbourg and Cologne around the year 1540: Pammachius (1539) and Mercator (1540) by Naogeorgus, Petrus Papaeus’ Comoedia de Samaritano evangelico (‘Comedy on the Good Samaritan from the Gospel’, 1539), Joannes Sapidus’ (or Johann Witz’) Anabion sive Lazarus redivivus (‘Anabion [Coming to Life a Again], or the Raising of Lazarus’, 1540), Gnapheus’ Acolastus and Jacobus Zovitius’ Ovis perdita (‘The Lost Sheep’, 1540).72
Sturm emphasised rhetoric and declamation rather than the theatrical side of a performance. After he left the Academy in 1481, a new wind blew, and other comedies and tragedies were written with more emphasis on the aesthetic aspects of drama than on its moral-didactic value.73 Terence was replaced as a model by Seneca, and the theories of Aristotle on tragedy (a hero who is neither wholly good nor wholly evil; unities of time and action) and of Horace on drama (five acts and a chorus after the first four acts) were observed. Sturm’s departure thus heralded the second phase of Neo-Latin drama.
This section discussed the history and role of Neo-Latin drama in the Protestant Reformation in Germany, emphasizing, again, its educational and moral-didactic purposes, even more than its purpose of entertainment. Some Protestant schoolmasters used biblical drama to reinforce religious teachings. While some playwrights, for instance Macropedius and Gnapheus, adopted a more neutral Christian perspective, others, such as Naogeorgus, employed drama for fierce anti-Catholic polemics.
As Luther supported the use of drama in education, Protestant playwrights were encouraged to employ it in the curriculum, basing themselves on classical models. Some cities and institutions, such as Augsburg and the Strasbourg Academy, became centres for Neo-Latin drama, initially focusing on rhetoric and moral instruction before shifting toward a more aesthetic, theatrical approach.
3 France, Portugal, and Spain 1540–1680
The new orientation towards the tragedies of Seneca and Euripides in France was a kind of precursor of the second phase in Germany.74 The Scottish emigrant George Buchanan (1506–1582), who taught at the Collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux, was an exponent of this new direction.75 He translated two Greek plays by Euripides into Latin, Medea and Alcestis, and wrote two plays of his own: Baptistes, sive calumnia, tragoedia (‘John the Baptist, or Calumny, a Tragedy’, printed in 1577) and Iephthes sive votum, tragoedia (‘Jephthah, or the Vow, a Tragedy’, printed in 1554), all written in Bordeaux between 1540 and 1543 – Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) happened to be one of the young actors who performed them.76 In Baptistes Buchanan fuelled speculation about the political allegory of the play, suggesting that John the Baptist was a type of Thomas More. Others sought a more pro-Reformation interpretation, equating King Herod with the Pope. Iephthes has a Euripidean structure and a Senecan style. Its theme is the rash vow of the Israelite warlord Jephthah, who promised to sacrifice the first thing he would encounter after a victory, met his daughter and offered her to God (Judges 11:30–40). Buchanan gives the anonymous daughter the name Iphis, thus linking this vow to Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigeneia to the gods in order to gain a tailwind to Troy, as depicted by Euripides in Iphigeneia in Aulis. This tragedy may also have played a role in contemporary history, since it was probably written in the time of the controversy between the Protestant theologian Martin Bucer (1491–1551) and his Roman Catholic colleague Jacobus Latomus (1475–1544) about the taking of vows (1543–1546).77 In the Netherlands Joost van den Vondel (1587–1679) translated it a century later as Jeptha of offerbelofte (Jephthah, or the Sacrificial Vow, 1659) – without the former topical connotation.78
A Senecan history play was also composed by Buchanan’s contemporary, the French author Marc-Antoine Muret or Muretus (1526–1585), with Iulius Caesar, written in Auch in 1540 and printed in 1553.79 This play about the assassination of Caesar combined, on the one hand, the praise of Brutus and his act of liberating the Republic and, on the other, the apotheosis of the victim.80 It had a great influence in France, inspiring Jacques Grévin’s César (1561), Georges de Scudéry’s La mort de César (1635) and Pierre Corneille’s Cinna (1642–1643).81 After the tragedies of Buchanan and Muret, vernacular tragedy prevailed. Théodore de Bèze’s (1519–1605) Abraham sacrifiant (‘Abraham Sacrificing [Isaac]’, 1550) was written in French, but translated into Latin half a century later by an otherwise unknown Jacobus Bruno as Abrahamus sacrificans (1599), printed in Haarlem in the Netherlands, and yet some fifteen years later again in Germany, by Michael Aschenborn, in 1613, neither time in France.
The beginnings of Neo-Latin drama in France were not so much oriented towards the classics as towards medieval forms.82 Only a few farces were written in Latin, some of which were translations, such as Alexandre Connibert’s Veterator sive Pathelinus (‘The Cunning Fox or Pathelin’, 1512), a translation of the French Farce du Maitre Pierre Pathelin, the first printed edition of which dates from 1485. Biblical comedy failed to gain much ground in France either.83 Christus xylonicus (‘Christ, Sieging at the Cross’, 1529) by Nicholas Barthelemy de Loches or Nicolaus Bar(p)tholomaeus (1478–c.1540) is called a tragoedia, but it lies somewhere between mediaeval mystery plays and classical comedy or tragedy.84 Earlier, Latin tragedies by the Italian humanist Giovanni Francesco Conti or Quintianus Stoa (1484–1557), Theoandrothanatos (‘The Death of the God-Man [= Christ]’, 1508) and Theocrisis (‘God’s Judgement’, 1514) were imported and printed in Paris.85 Other tragedies were written by Jesuit authors and will be discussed below.
In Portugal the writing of Neo-Latin drama gained momentum when King João III the Pious (r. 1521–1557) brought to his country the Portuguese authors Andrea de Gouveia (1497–1548) and Diogo de Teive or Jacobus Tevius (c.1515–after 1569), both of whom taught in Bordeaux, together with their colleague George Buchanan.86 The king had moved the university from Lisbon to Coimbra, where he founded a College of Arts in 1542.87 The aforementioned humanist dramatists were invited to this College. Diogo de Teive had his Golias (on the battle between David and Goliath) performed in 1550 and published a Judith in 1556. A performance of his Ioannis Principis tragoedia (‘The Tragedy of King John’, 1558), a Senecan play with a contemporary theme, was forbidden, perhaps because the portrayal of the king’s death was too offensive.88 In Portugal the Jesuits, especially Juan da Cruz, took a different approach to theatre.
Spanish Neo-Latin drama was more inspired by its Italian counterpart.89 In particular, Alberti’s Philodoxeos fabula had an influence on Neo-Latin drama in Spain.90 The fact that Spain was so strongly influenced by Italy had to do with travelling scholars, but also with the fact that Alfonso V the Magnanimous (1396–1458) was king of Aragon as well as Naples.91 The first major (non-Jesuit) name to be mentioned here is Joannes Maldonatus or Juan Maldonado (c.1485–1554), a priest in Burgos. In 1519–1520 he wrote a Latin comedy, Hispaniola (‘The Spanish Woman’), which he called a fabula comoedians (‘a play in the form of a comedy’) and which was performed in Burgos in 1523 or 1524 before the Queen of Portugal, Eleanor of Austria. The first edition of 1521 is now lost, but the third edition of 1535 survives. It tells the story of a love affair and adultery, while at the same time – following in the footsteps of Erasmus – criticising empty ceremonies, the hypocrisy of Franciscan preachers and the like, combining classical comedy, Neo-Latin drama and contemporary popular Spanish and Italian drama in the vernacular.
Joannes Petreius or Juan Pérez ‘Petreyo’ (c.1511–c.1544) was a professor of rhetoric at the Collegium Trilingue in Alcalá de Henares.92 He wrote plays such as Ate relegata (‘Blindness Exiled’, 1539–1540), a eulogy of Alcalá and its university, and Chrysonia (‘Things of the Golden Ass’), a reworking of that part of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses; he also translated Italian plays by Ludovico Ariosto as Il negromante (‘The Necromancer’), Lena and I Suppositi (‘The Pretenders’) into Latin, and he reworked the anonymous Gl’Ingannati as Decepti (‘The Deceived’, 1537–1541, printed 1574). Plays from the Netherlands were also performed in Spain: the Samarites (‘The Good Samaritan’, 1539), about the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32) who is rescued by the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29–37) was reworked and given a theological commentary (1542) by the Spaniard Alexius Venegas or Alejo Vanegas (1498–1562).93 In the 1540s and 1550s a particular genre emerged in Spain, the multilingual comoedia hispano-latina, in which the masters spoke in Latin and the servants in the vernacular.94 Borders were changing: The city of Perpignan, now in France, was part of the Spanish crown until 1652. In 1543 the Catalan priest Francesc Satorres, professor in Perpignan, published in Barcelona the play Delphinus, which was written and performed in Perpignan during the siege of the city of 1542, imposed by the Dauphin of France Henri, eldest son of Francis I.95
In brief, in France early Neo-Latin drama initially drew mainly from medieval forms before aligning itself more closely with classical models. The tragedies of George Buchanan and Marc-Antoine Muret played a significant role in this transition, with their works incorporating political allegory and classical tragic structures. This classical revival in France later gave way to vernacular tragedy, with authors such as Théodore de Bèze contributing to the development of French-language drama.
In Portugal Neo-Latin drama flourished under the patronage of King João III, who brought scholars from France to establish a humanist theatre tradition at Coimbra. Playwrights drew upon both biblical and contemporary themes, frequently inspired by Senecan models. However, Jesuit dramatists in Portugal adopted a distinct approach, emphasising religious and educational themes.
Spain exhibited a stronger influence of Italian humanist drama, likely attributable to historical ties between the two countries. Spanish Neo-Latin drama blended classical, Neo-Latin, and vernacular elements, incorporating influences from Erasmus and contemporary European theatre. A distinctive feature of Spanish drama in this period was the emergence of multilingual plays, where Latin was used for the speech of masters while servants spoke in the vernacular. This was one Spanish way of adapting drama to the non-Latinate public.
4 The Second and Third Phases (1580–1650 and 1650–1750)
In the second phase of Neo-Latin drama, from c.1580 to c.1650, confessionalisation took hold, and the Jesuits ‘entered the stage’.96 The Peace of Westphalia (1648), which ended the Thirty Years’ War in Germany and the wars between the Holy Roman Empire and France and Sweden, and the Peace of Münster, which ended the Eighty Years’ War between the Netherlands and Spain, likewise brought cultural change. These treaties symbolically ended a long period of religious conflict. I therefore regard 1648 as the start of a new phase in European literature, including Neo-Latin drama. Whereas in the early sixteenth century Neo-Latin drama had been primarily an instrument in the school curriculum to teach the tenets of the Protestant religion, it later became more of an instrument of polemic, although most dramas were not or were only mildly polemical.
In this second phase of early modern Latin drama, with Strasbourg as its main centre, the idea of drama serving civic education was to some extent abandoned, and entertainment came to the fore.97 Performances were intended for the masses outside the schools (which had been allowed since Sturm’s departure in 1576), rather than just for the pupils and their parents.98 This may have been the result of the brilliant performances of the Commedia dell’arte troupes and the English comedians who travelled through Europe, especially German lands, as well as – gradually – of the great shows of the Jesuits.99 The emphasis on entertainment was also a concession to the general public who did not understand Latin. In addition, German argumenta (‘summaries’) were spoken and programmes produced for the audience, providing summaries of plays, acts or even scenes and often with lists of the actors. Even the repertoire changed from predominantly ancient comedies to Neo-Latin plays. The first Strasbourg drama of this period is Daniel (c.1600) by Justus Meierus (1566–1622), who was born in the Netherlands (Nijmegen) and became a professor of civil law in Strasbourg.100 The play presents the story of Daniel showing that Bel (Baal) and the Dragon, both worshipped by the Babylonians, are ‘fake gods’, as told in Daniel 14, an apocryphal chapter of this prophetic book. It is part of the ‘turn towards the general audience’ offering a prologue and epilogue as well as summaries of each act, in German. It is also full of theatrical elements, such as the explosion of the dragon that is not narrated but shown. As the German ‘Argumentum’ of the third Act states, after telling that the daughters of the Babylonian king worship the Dragon:
Then comes Daniel, who scornfully offers the cakes to the dragon, which devours them whole and entire. Soon after, the cruel monster is seen burning with fire and flame; it bursts apart completely and dies in agony.
As usual in a comedy ‘all’s well that ends well’, as the Chorus musicus sings in the final lines before the German Epilogus:
O my friends, rejoice! Victory brings praise: the enemy has turned to flight, slander has been overcome and has yielded. Let no good person fear, for at last, a just cause triumphs.
The most famous Strasbourg author was Caspar Brülow (1585–1627), who started out as a teacher at the Gymnasium there and was appointed to teach rhetoric at the Academy in 1615.103 From 1612 to 1616 he wrote a Neo-Latin play every year for a performance at the Strasbourg Academy Theatre.104 He wrote his last play in 1621: Moses, sive Exitus Israelitarum ex Aegypto, tragico-comoedia sacra (‘Moses, or the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, a Biblical Tragi-Comedy’), which seems to have borrowed lines and passages from other, contemporary plays.105 His plays deal with Greek mythology, Old Testament stories, a Greek romance and Roman history, such as Andromede, tragoedia (1612); Elias, drama tragicum (1613), which ends with the ascension or apotheosis of Elijah and the punishment of Queen Jezebel and her husband, Chariclia, tragico-comoedia (1614); Nebucadnezar, comoedia sacra (1615) and Gaius Iulius Caesar, tragoedia (1616). All of these plays were performed and published in Strasbourg.
Brülow, however, was not the first writer of the second period. The most important playwright at the beginning of this period, outside Strasbourg, was Nicodemus Frischlin (1547–1590), who occasionally acted in his own plays.106 The dramas of this Tübingen professor and court poet are both Lutheran and witty. He marked the new period of entertainment in Neo-Latin drama in Germany. In his first creative period he wrote two biblical dramas: Rebecca (1576) about Isaac’s wife from Genesis, and Susanna (1577), from the apocryphal part of Daniel, and a drama about the legendary history of Germany: Hildegardis magna (1579). In the second mode of his drama, which was more Aristophanic – he translated plays by the Greek comedian Aristophanes into Latin107 – Frischlin wrote on grammar and school life. This mode includes Priscianus vapulans (‘Priscian Beaten’, 1578), on the late antique scholar Priscian (late fifth/early sixth century) and his famous grammar book Institutiones grammaticae (‘Introduction to Linguistics’). The maltreated grammarian as the personification of good Latin finds no help at the (Roman Catholic) university faculties, but is cured by Erasmus and Philipp Melanchthon, and finally liberated from the barbaric medieval Latin writings of the Roman Catholic Church. It is therefore an anti-Catholic play, as demonstrated by a mirror subplot in which the peasant Corydon accuses his wife of adultery with two clerics. The trial on this accusation takes place in 1517, the year of the publication of Luther’s 95 Theses. As Roloff aptly writes: ‘Frischlin’s dramas, almost all of which were performed at the Stuttgart court, are characterised by mostly new material, a personal form that is far removed from Roman comedy, a tendency to arabesque, comic subplots, elegant language, witty dialogue, a preference for vivid situations, sharp characterisation of the individual types, but above all a joy in pure representation and acting.’108
A truly curious play by Frischlin is Phasma (‘Monster’, ‘Dream’ or ‘Apparition’, 1580), performed by Frischlin’s students in Tübingen and in Stuttgart in 1580, on the occasion of the carnival and the fiftieth anniversary of the Confessio Augustana.109 The title, as the prologue explains, was borrowed from Menander’s comedy of the same title (Phasma, ‘The Apparition’) in which a girl makes a young man fall in love with her by appearing through a crack in the wall; in this new play the Devil seduces the faithful through such a crack. The fiercely polemical anti-Catholic play was published posthumously in 1592 and then became popular; it was translated into German twice. All Christian denominations, Roman Catholic and Protestant, are defamed, except Lutheranism. Remarkably, Frischlin combined German and Latin: each of the five acts begins with a German summary, there is an entirely German scene in the fifth act, and the play ends with two choruses singing in German, and an Epilogue also spoken in German. His Julius redivivus (‘Julius Back to Life’, 1572 and 1585) was his most successful play: Julius Caesar and Cicero reconcile and visit sixteenth-century Germany, admiring its cultural flourishing and political dominance.110 Caesar and Cicero speak in their own literary styles, and another character speaks in Italian, which the other two do not understand. This leads to hilarious misunderstandings. The Tübingen court, where Frischlin’s plays were performed, must have enjoyed them.
Other playwrights were less innovative and stuck to established forms such as biblical drama and farce. In the northern Netherlands at this time Cornelius Schonaeus or Cornelis Schoen (1540–1611) took pride of place with his biblical and farcical plays.111 After studying in Louvain, he became ludimagister (‘schoolmaster’) in Haarlem and later headmaster there, a position he retained, although a Catholic, after the city’s alteration to Protestantism. He wrote eighteen Neo-Latin plays, most of them comoediae sacrae on subjects from the Old and the New Testaments and the apocryphal or deuterocanonical books, four comoediae ludicrae (‘farces’), and a lottery play, Fabula comica (1606), to support the building of a home for the elderly. One of the farces, Dyscoli (‘Bad Pupils’, 1603), is a reworking of Macropedius’ Rebelles, published some 70 years earlier. His first four dramas (Naaman, Tobaeus, Nehemias and Saulus conversus) appeared in a pirated edition in Cologne in 1591 under the title Terentius Christianus. This became Schonaeus’ honorary title, which he used for his publications from 1594; it also became a reference to early modern Latin biblical drama in the style of Terence (and Plautus). Like Gnapheus’ Acolastus and Macropedius’ Hecastus, Schonaeus’ Tobaeus (‘Tobias’, 1568) was a huge success, with more than fifty editions and translations into English, German, Danish and Polish as well as a production in Strasbourg. Yet, he was more a perfector than an innovator of Latin drama.112
Strict Plautus adaptations were made by the German Johann Burmeister (1576–1638).113 This Neo-Latin Poet Laureate, theologian and Lutheran pastor wrote four comedies, two of which have survived in full or in fragments. The first is Μ.A. Plauti renati sive Sacri Mater-Virgo. Comoedia prima ex Amphitruone ad admirandum Conceptionis et Incarnationis Filii Dei mysterium inversa (‘Mother-Virgin: The First Comedy of Marcus Accius Plautus Reborn, or rather Sanctified, Inverted from Amphitryo into the Marvellous Mystery of the Conception and Incarnation of the Son of God’, 1621), of which only fragments survive. In the play, the Devil (Asmodaeus) tries in vain to prove the illegitimacy of Christ’s birth. The Plautine characters are ‘inverted’: Jupiter becomes God, Alcmene Mary, Amphitryon Joseph, the infant Hercules Jesus, and Mercury the angel Gabriel, as is the text itself, which remains close to the original, but changes it dramatically by substituting words. The title of the second play, which has survived, is: M.A. Plauti renati sive sacri Aulularia, comoedia tertia ex fabula ethnica ad biblicam de Achanis furto historiam inversa (‘The Aulularia of Marcus Accius Plautus Reborn or Sanctified: His Third Comedy Aulularia Inverted from a Pagan Play into the Biblical Story of Achan’s Theft’, 1629).114 According to the Old Testament Book of Joshua this Achan hid some gold and silver and fine clothes, in defiance of Joshua’s order that all the spoil from the cities of Jericho and Ai should be gathered into the treasure of the Lord (Jos 7). Two other Plautus inversus plays have been completely lost: a Susanna (‘inverting’ Plautus’ Casina) and an Asinaria ad Regum Israel historiam inversa (‘Asinaria Inverted into the History of the Kings of Israel’, 1625).
The comedies of Jacobus Rosefeldt (c.1575–after 1602), the son of a Lutheran pastor and living in Jena, are further removed from their classical models.115 His first play, Chamus, comoedia sacra nova prior (‘Cham, First New Biblical Comedy’, 1599), and his last, Hiskias (1606), deal with themes from the Hebrew Bible – Rosefeldt studied Hebrew –, while his third, Carabonna, comoedia alia noviter concinnata (‘Carabonna, Another Comedy, Newly Arranged’, 1600), tells the story of a Spanish love affair between Princess Carabonna and her lover Floridus in the style of an Italian novella. The play was revived for Landgrave Moritz of Hesse in 1603. Chamus deals with the drunkenness of Noah, the anger of his son Cham and Cham’s building of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 9 and 11); with a refined wit, the confusion of tongues in the city leads the craftsmen to speak in English, Italian, Bohemian, Lower German and six (!) other languages. In his second play, Moschus, comoedia altera (‘Moses, Second Comedy’, 1599), Rosefeldt uses the theme of Shakespeare’s recent Merchant of Venice (written between 1596 and 1598). He probably knew the Shylock theme of borrowing money to help a friend from English travelling companies who performed in Germany. The name Barrabas, which appears in the play and also in Christopher Marlowe’s The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta (written between 1598 and 1600), may point in this direction.116 Rosefeldt used rhyming choruses in the style of Reuchlin and of his contemporary Daniel Cramer (1568–1637) of Wittenberg, and borrowed scenes almost verbatim from Reuchlin’s Henno, which was a century older. Cramer’s Areteugenia (‘Virtuous Well-Born’, c.1592) is partly linked to Italian literature, dramatizing the rescue of the knight Aretino and his sister Eugenia from robbers. The simple plot is enlivened by a Morio, a jester from the Commedia dell’arte or from English comedians, and other elements from these traditions. His second play, Plagium (‘Kidnapping’, 1593), is about the kidnapping of the Saxon Princes: on the night of 7 to 8 July 1455 Kunz von Kauffungen kidnapped the princes Ernst and Albrecht, aged 14 and 11 respectively, who later became the founders of the states of Thuringia and Saxony. The play, with its social critique of the exploitation of peasants and labourers, was successful with its nine Latin editions and four German translations: the satirist Bartholomäus Ringwaldt translated it as early as 1597 as Vom sächsischen Prinzenraube (‘On the Saxon Princes’ Theft’). As late as c.1780 the travelling company of Peter Florenz Ilgener performed a German-language farce based on Plagium, now transformed into a bitter satire on knights and peasants, in northern Germany.
Turbo (‘Whirlwind’ or ‘Restless Spirit’, 1616) by the German Protestant theologian Johann Valentin Andreae (1586–1654) is a grandiose satire on contemporary culture.117 As the subtitle (sive moleste et frustra per cuncta divagans ingenium, i.e. ‘or a Spirit that Wanders with Effort and in Vain along Everything’) suggests, the protagonist Turbo, like later Goethe’s Faust, restlessly seeks knowledge without achieving inner harmony. He turns to magic, but in vain, he even loses his money. Only when Sapientia gives him peace in the fifth act does Turbo become Tranquillus. There are also four remarkable interscenia in which Andreae ridicules vain scholars, greedy people, officials and the great minds of antiquity. For the first time in Latin drama the figure of the Harlequin appears on stage as Turbo’s companion. This figure combines characteristics of the ancient parasite, the Italian Harlequin and the Dutch Pickelhering. His early comoediae sacrae, Esther and Hyacinthus (both written in 1605 and published in 1616), were also inspired by English models, or at least written ad aemulationem Anglicorum histrionum (‘to rival English actors’), as Valentin Andreae writes.118
Theodorus Rhodius or Theodor Rhode (c.1570–1626) who studied in Tübingen and in Strasbourg, wrote several plays on biblical themes, including Simson (1600), Saulus (about King Saul, c.1606), a Joseph trilogy (about the patriarch), and a Debora (1600).119 His most elaborate play is a historical tragedy in the style of Seneca, Colignius (1614), about the murder of the French Protestant nobleman Gaspar de Coligny on St Bartholomew’s Day (1572).120
The last great writer of Latin comedy of this period was the Tübingen professor Hermann Flayder (1596–1640).121 His plays include Ludovicus bigamus, comoedia nova et festiva (‘The Bigamous Louis, a New and Merry Comedy’, 1625) about a legendary count who marries two wives, and Imma portatrix, comoedia nova et consultoria (‘Emma the Carrying, a New and Consultative Comedy’, 1625) about the – equally legendary – love of Imma, daughter of Emperor Charlemagne, for one of her father’s subordinates, their discovery and eventual marriage. In 1626 he adapted John Barclay’s famous novel Argenis (1621) into a comedy: Argenis Barclai in comoediam redacta, and the following year, in 1627, he attempted a comedy of Erasmus’ Praise of Folly (first published 1511), in Moria rediviva, quae tamen nunquam fuit mortua: Hoc est Moria Erasmi socco comico induta et in Theatrum producta (‘Folly Revived, Who, However, Was Never Dead: That Is: The Folly of Erasmus Dressed in a Comic Shoe and Produced in the Theatre’). His plays earned him the honorary title of ‘the second Frischlin’.
In the Netherlands the Senecan tradition began with the Stuarta tragoedia (1593) by Adrianus Roulerius or Adrien de Roulers († 1597) from Douai, in the southern Netherlands.122 The subject of the play, which starts in a Senecan manner with the appearance of a ghost, here the ghost of Henry VIII, is the execution of Mary Stuart six years earlier in 1587. This tragedy was the beginning of a tradition of tragedies on Mary Queen of Scots. In the northern Netherlands the Leiden students Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) and Daniel Heinsius (1580–1655) wrote dramas to raise the standard of tragedy in the Dutch Republic.123 These dramas were highly influential. Grotius published his biblical tragedies Adamus exul (‘Adam Exiled’) in 1601, Christus patiens (‘The Passion of Christ’) in 1608 and Sophompaneas (‘Joseph at Court’) in 1635.124 The second and third Senecan tragedies were particularly well received in England. George Sandys wrote a translation and commentary entitled Christs passion a tragedie (1540), and Francis Goldsmith did the same in 1652: Hugo Grotius his Sophompaneas, or, Ioseph a tragedy.125 In Grotius’ country the famous Amsterdam playwright Joost van den Vondel (1587–1679) translated Adamus exul as Adam in ballingschap (1664) and Sophompaneas as Ioseph of Sophompaneas, in the same year in which the Latin original was published.126
Daniel Heinsius published two dramas: the history play Auriacus sive Libertas saucia (‘Orange or Liberty Wounded’, 1602), adapted into Dutch twice, in Leiden in 1606 and in Amsterdam in 1617, and the biblical tragedy Herodes infanticida (‘Herod the Infanticide’, published in 1632, written during the 1610s). Heinsius was best known as a dramatic theorist for his De tragoediae constitutione (1611), a treatise on tragedy that was also a commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics.127 For Heinsius and Grotius drama was a literary achievement rather than an educational tool; and although Seneca was the main model, the Greek tragedies of Euripides inspired Grotius’ plays, particularly his Sophompaneas. The plays by Heinsius and Grotius were also known in France. In the preface to Polyeucte (1643) Pierre Corneille declared that he had dared to write a martyr drama with fictional additions by referring to the tragedies of Grotius, Heinsius and Buchanan:
Le célèbre Heinsius, qui non seulement a traduit la Poétique de notre philosophe mais a fait un Traité de la constitution de la tragédie selon sa pensée, nous en a donné une sur le martyre des Innocents. L’illustre Grotius a mis sur la scène la Passion même de Jesus-Christ et l’histoire de Joseph; et le savant Buchanan a fait la même chose de celle de Jephté, et de la mort de saint Jean-Baptiste. C’est sur ces exemples que j’ai hasardé ce poème, où je me suis donné des licences qu’ils n’ont pas prises, de changer l’histoire en quelque chose, et d’y mêler des épisodes d’invention: aussi m’étoit-il plus permis sur cette matière qu’à eux sur celle qu’ils ont choisie.128
The famous Heinsius, who not only translated the Poetics of our philosopher but also wrote a Treatise on the Constitution of Tragedy according to his thought, gave us one on the martyrdom of the Innocents. The illustrious Grotius brought to the stage the very Passion of Jesus Christ and the story of Joseph; and the learned Buchanan did the same with that of Jephthah and the death of Saint John the Baptist. It is following these examples that I have ventured upon this poem, in which I have taken liberties that they did not, by altering history somewhat and incorporating invented episodes. Moreover, I was more permitted to do so with this subject than they were with the ones they chose.
Another tragedy with an almost contemporary theme was Gustavus saucius (‘Gustaf Wounded’, 1628) by Johannes Narssius or Johan van Naarssen (1580–1637), who also belonged to the Leiden circle.129 After studying theology, he turned to medicine and worked as a doctor; but during the religious unrest of the time he fled to Sweden and became court poet and historian to Gustaf Adolf II. The tragedy deals with the campaigns of 1627.
Most tragedies in the Netherlands, however, were written in the southern, Spanish Netherlands, during the reign of Albert and Isabella, where several playwrights were active: Nicolaus Vernulaeus in Louvain, Jacobus Cornelius Lummenaeus a Marca in Ghent, and the Jesuits Johannes Surius in Mons and Jacobus Libenus in Malines.130
The Louvain professor of eloquence Nicolaus Vernulaeus or Nicolas Vernulz (1583–1648) was a prolific author who wrote fourteen plays about (recent) history and martyrs of the early Church.131 One of his most notable plays is Gorcomienses sive fidei exilium (‘The Martyrs of Gorcum or the Exile of the Faith’, 1610), about the martyrdom of nineteen Catholic priests who were hanged by the ‘Watergeuzen’ (‘Sea-Beggars’) at Den Briel in 1572. As a Catholic, he defended the reign of Albert and Isabella and condemned the conversion of Henry VIII in Henricus Octavus seu schisma Anglicanum (‘Henry VIII, or the English Schism’, 1624).132
The Benedictine Jacobus Cornelius Lummenaeus a Marca or Lummené de Marcke (c.1580–c.1628) occupies a special position.133 In his eight Senecan dramas, the choruses are the most prominent parts, accounting for about seventy per cent of the text. Most of the plays have Old Testament themes, while two of them deal with the New Testament, the conversion of Saul (Saulus) and the parable of the poor man Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19–31), called Dives epulo (‘The Rich Glutton’). Some plays relate to French humanist tragedy, such as Robert Garnier’s (1544–1590) Les Juives (1583), which has the same theme as Lummenaeus’ Carcer Babylonius (‘The Babylonian Captivity’, 1610), and Buchanan’s Iephthes, which is similar to Lummenaeus’ Iephte (1608).
To summarize, the second phase of Neo-Latin drama (c.1580–1650) was shaped by religious and political shifts, particularly the confessionalization of Europe and the influence of the Jesuits. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) marked the end of prolonged religious conflicts and signified a cultural transition in European literature, including Neo-Latin drama.
During this period drama evolved from primarily serving educational and religious instruction to becoming a tool for polemic and entertainment. While early sixteenth-century Neo-Latin drama was largely used for instruction within schools, it later reached broader audiences and often carried political or religious messages. The shift in focus led to greater theatricality and spectacle, as performances moved beyond school settings to appeal to the general public. The influence of traveling Commedia dell’arte troupes and English actors was evident in the increasing emphasis on entertainment, dramatic action and audience engagement.
Strasbourg remained a key centre for Neo-Latin drama, where plays were often performed with added elements to make them more accessible, such as periochae, booklets containing summaries in vernacular languages. Over time, the repertoire expanded beyond classical themes to include biblical narratives, historical subjects, and even social satire. Some playwrights adhered closely to classical forms, while others experimented with dramatic structure, incorporating elements of farce, wit, and contemporary commentary.
An important development was the introduction of national and religious themes. Some dramas satirized societal issues, others reworked classical texts into Christian plays, and a few reflected contemporary intellectual debates.
5 England
In England the academies of Oxford and Cambridge dominated the scene of Neo-Latin drama.134 From 1520 onwards their tutors and scholars not only wrote original plays – mostly tragedies at Oxford, mostly comedies at Cambridge –, but also had their students perform classical comedies by Plautus and Terence or Neo-Latin plays from the continent. Thus, Macropedius’ play about the Prodigal Son, Asotus (published in 1537), was performed by students at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1565.135 One of the most famous and successful comedies by a British author was Pedantius (‘The Pedant’, perf. 1581, printed 1631), written by Edward Forsett (1553/4–1629/30) for the same Trinity College, Cambridge, in which a pedantic schoolmaster who tries to impress the girl Lydia with over-learned, grotesque Latin, is ridiculed; she, in turn, does not like him.136
Before him, Nicholas Grimald (1519/20–1562?) wrote a biblical tragedy inspired in structure and style by Seneca’s tragedies, Archipropheta (‘The Archprophet’), probably performed at Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1548.137 Based on the German Jacob Schoepper’s Ectrachelistes, sive decollatus Ioannes (‘The Decapitated, or John the Baptist Beheaded’, Cologne 1546), Grimald deals with the awful murder of John, as told in Mark 6:27–29). As in Buchanan’s Baptistes, the beheading testifies to his great faith. Grimald was the perfect ‘Oxbridge’ scholar, having studied at both Oxford and Cambridge, but choosing to stay – for a while – at Oxford. It was there that he wrote the tragedy Christus redivivus (‘The Resurrection of Christ’), performed at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1540. In this play, which according to the title page is a comoedia tragica, sacra et noua, i.e. both a sacred comedy and a tragicomedy, the Resurrection is presented as the key turning point in history. This play was also published three times in Germany.138
The martyrologist, clergyman and theologian John Foxe (1516/17–1587) was probably inspired by Thomas Naogeorgus’ Pammachius to include fierce attacks on the papacy in his play on the history of the Church finally redeemed by Christ, Christus triumphans (‘Christ Triumphant’, 1551 or 1556).139 As Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, Thomas Legge wrote a Richardus Tertius, tragaedia trivespera (‘Richard the Third, a Tragedy in Three Evenings’, written between 1578 and 1580), which may be related to Shakespeare’s tragedy of the same name.140
Probably the most famous Neo-Latin play from England is George Ruggle’s Ignoramus (‘Nitwit’). It was performed in Cambridge before King James I in 1615.141 It was published seven times before 1787 and three times in English in the seventeenth century. It is a truly English play that pokes fun at the English legal system, although it is based on an Italian example, Giambattista Della Porta’s Trappolaria (1596). The college recorder Francis Brackyn, the ‘Ignoramus’ of the play, is ridiculed as a ‘common lawyer’ who uses crude legal Latin. In Ignoramus he is in love with Rosabella, who rejects him but not his money. He is suspected of being mad, and after an exorcism he is taken to a monastery.
In summary, in England Neo-Latin drama flourished primarily at Oxford and Cambridge from the early 16th century onwards, with Oxford more typically favouring tragedies and Cambridge having a slight preference for comedies. They also performed classical works and Neo-Latin plays from the continent.
Many plays drew inspiration from biblical stories, classical models like Seneca or contemporary social and political themes. Some works satirized figures such as pedantic scholars and legal professionals, while others engaged in religious debates, particularly critiquing the papacy. The most famous example, Ignoramus (1615), ridiculed the legal profession and was performed before King James I. Overall, Neo-Latin drama at Oxford and Cambridge played a significant role in academic and cultural life, finding a place in later English theatre.
6 Middle and Eastern European Countries
Bohemia and Moravia had a lively tradition of theatre performance.142 At first, mainly biblical dramas were performed, but playwrights gradually turned to historical and political themes. Johannes Campanus Vodnianus (1572–1622), for example, wrote a play called Raptus Judithae, imperatoris filiae, a principe Bretislao (‘The Rape of Judith, the Emperor’s Daughter, by Prince Bratislav’, 1614).143 He wrote the play as a Hussite, a few years before he converted to Catholicism. The performance was banned by the imperial court, because it could be seen as directed against the Habsburgs. Instead, Ioseph (1535) by the Amsterdam playwright Cornelius Crocus (c.1500–1550) was performed.144 In general, Protestant playwrights presented plays such as Macropedius’ Hecastus (1539) in Prague in 1570 in competition with Jesuit performances.
In the same city Šebestián Měděný or Sebastianus Aerichalcus (c.1515–1555), who was born in Bohemia and studied in Wittenberg, organised performances of school plays such as a Susanna (perhaps the 1537 play by Sixt Birck) for an audience including Ferdinand I of Habsburg at Prague Castle in 1543.145 It is not known whether he wrote dramas himself. Other Latin plays by Germans were also performed in Prague, such as Frischlin’s Rebecca in 1575.
In Hungary, largely occupied by the Ottomans, school theatre was the only constant cultural factor.146 Much of the unoccupied part of the country was converted to Protestantism, so it was mainly the Protestant schools that used the theatre in their curriculum. There was a lively exchange of scholars and schoolmasters between Hungary and its neighbours, Germany and Austria. As a result, Latin plays from these countries were performed, either in Latin or in Hungarian translation. In Ödenburg Christoph Lackner (1571–1631) staged three Latin plays for large audiences, the first of which was an educational play Cura regia seu consultatio paterna (‘Royal Care or Fatherly Consultation’, 1615). However, these plays were partly written in competition with the splendid performances by the Jesuits, who also played an important role in Hungary. In Poland it was the Jesuits who dominated the production of plays.147
It is difficult to confine Jan Amos Komenský or Comenius (1592–1670) to one country and one genre. Born in Moravia (now in the Czech Republic), he studied theology in Herborn and Heidelberg and worked in Moravia, Silesia (also in the Czech Republic), Poland, Pomerania (then part of Sweden), England, the Netherlands (where he met René Descartes), back to Pomeria until he was exiled for his Protestantism and given asylum in Amsterdam. He is a truly transnational author. Among his 250 (!) works are revolutionary language textbooks, an encyclopaedia for teaching Latin to children, a religious hymnal and works on ‘pansophism’, the Baconian idea to collect and organise ‘all knowledge’.
In the context of his didactic ideas, he wrote Diogenes cynicus redivivus (‘The Cynic Diogenes Back Again’), written in Poland in the 1630s, but published in Amsterdam in 1658 and again in 1661, with a preface indicating that the play had been performed several times at Amsterdam schools in the intervening years.148 The prose play in four acts depicts the life of the Greek cynic philosopher Diogenes, and it affirms the didactic and moral value of school drama, opposing theatre as mere entertainment. Although Comenius respected the Jesuit drama of his time, this may be a slightly provocative criticism of it, as it gradually became a multimedia theatrical experience.
In brief, Neo-Latin theatre in Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary and Poland developed dynamically, initially focusing on biblical themes before shifting to historical and political subjects. In Bohemia and Moravia Protestant and Jesuit groups competed for influence through theatrical performances, often staging plays with religious or political implications. Some performances were even censored for their perceived political messages.
In Hungary, where much of the country was under Ottoman rule, school theatre became a vital cultural institution. There was significant exchange with German and Austrian scholars, leading to performances of Latin plays from these regions, sometimes in translation. However, Jesuits equally played a major role in theatre, often competing with Protestant productions.
Poland’s Neo-Latin theatre was largely dominated by the Jesuits, who used drama as an educational and religious tool.
A notable transnational figure, Jan Amos Comenius supported the didactic and moral value of theatre, advocating for its use in education rather than mere entertainment. His plays were performed in Amsterdam schools and reflected broader trends in educational humanism.
Overall, theatre in these regions was deeply intertwined with religious, political, and educational developments, serving both as a tool for ideological expression and a means of cultural exchange.
7 Scandinavia
Little is known about Neo-Latin drama in the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland, which were under Danish rule from the fourteenth century until Sweden became independent in 1523.149 Latin plays were performed in schools and at court. In Denmark, the royal court often acted as a ‘Maecenas’ for Latin humanist and school drama. After the rise of Lutheranism, Latin plays were performed in more Danish towns. In the Scandinavian countries Jacob Jacobsen Wolf (1534–1635), rector in Ringsted, Oslo and Odense, presented parts of Virgil’s Aeneid in Dido and Turnus, in which the speeches are delivered by the characters and the narrative parts are assigned to the chorus (Tragoediae duae, quarum prima Didonis, altera Turni, ex Virgilii Aeneide transcriptae, ‘Two Tragedies, of Which the First is about Dido, the Other about Turnus, Adapted from Virgil’s Aeneid’, 1591).150 Half a century earlier, in Copenhagen in 1544, funds were supplied to agere Hystoriam Iudith, apparently in Latin.151
We do know of links between Scandinavian humanists and their German or Dutch counterparts. The University of Copenhagen, founded in 1479, had Latin plays performed from the 1520s onwards, and a Danish translation of Reuchlin’s Henno is also known. At the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century the Ribe headmaster Peder Hegelund, a teacher of Jacob Wolf, had his pupils perform several plays from different countries, either in Latin or in Danish translation.152 For example, he presented Susanna by the Augsburg rector Sixt Birck in his own translation and with his own interlude Calumnia sive diabola personata (‘Calumny or the Devil in Disguise’) in 1565,153 Iephthes by Buchanan in Latin and Acolastus by Gnapheus in translation, both in 1571, and Hieronymus Ziegler’s (c.1514–1562) De decem virginibus (‘The Ten Virgins’ [from Matthew 25], 1552) from Germany in 1572. Buchanan’s Iephthes was performed again, in a Danish translation by Søren Kjaer in 1576. The same Kjaer translated Rudolf Walter’s comedy Nabal (1549) into Danish, performed two years later.154
To summarise, Neo-Latin drama in Scandinavia was mainly performed in schools and at court, with Denmark’s royal court supporting humanist theatre. Scandinavian humanists maintained ties with German and Dutch scholars, translating and performing European plays in Latin and Danish, particularly in Copenhagen and under educators like Jacob Wolf and Peder Hegelund.
8 The Jesuits, Drama and Theatre
Founded in 1534 by Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) and approved by Pope Paul III in 1540, the Societas Iesu became a missionary order with a strong emphasis on education.155 As an order intent at the propagatio fidei (‘propagation of the faith’), the members defended the orthodox faith, i.e. Roman Catholicism, against Reformation movements, and were thus committed to the cause of the Counter-Reformation. Furthermore, they undertook missionary endeavours in East Asia (India, China, Japan) and South America (Brazil). In the realm of education they founded their first school in Vienna, in 1551, swiftly followed by numerous others in various cities in Germany and other European countries.156 Their arrival in France was delayed, but the order was admitted in 1560 after promising to abide by the French laws.157 In 1773 the Jesuit Order was suppressed due to allegations of excessive militancy and the incitement of unrest.
Just a few years after their foundation and after the establishment of their first schools (in Germany: Cologne 1544; Ingolstadt 1556; Munich 1559; Trier 1560; Mainz 1561; Dillingen 1563) the Jesuits started to have their students perform Latin plays.158 They began their theatrical activity with Levinus Brechtus’ Euripus, the tragedy (in the sense of a theologically sad ending) about the hell that awaits people who do not make the right choices.159 Noteworthy is the fact that, despite its authorship by a Minorite priest rather than a Jesuit, the play was staged to commemorate the foundation and inauguration of numerous Jesuit schools in Germany. The first known performance of the play by Jesuits – their earliest recorded theatrical production – took place at the opening of the Jesuit College in Vienna in 1555, four years after Emperor Ferdinand I had brought the Society to the city.160
Following this, the Jesuits soon began to write their own dramatic works. However, it is important to note that ‘Jesuit drama’ does not constitute a single genre, but rather a diverse array of theatrical forms, designed to capture the attention of the audience and thereby to serve the propagatio fidei.161 For the Jesuits, theatre could be considered a form of sermon, with the objective of edification and spiritual nourishment. The Jesuits’ oeuvre includes tragedies, tragicomedies and comedies, all of which were intended to serve the Societas Iesu. Consequently, numerous plays were written anonymously and have only survived in manuscript form. Nevertheless, many names of famous Jesuit authors are known, and their plays were printed separately or in Opera omnia editions. Eleven of their tragedies were collected in a two-volume set, printed in Antwerp in 1634 by the publisher and printer Ioannes Cnobbarus or Knobbaert: Selectae Patrum Societatis Iesu tragoediae (‘Selected Tragedies of the Fathers of the Society of Jesus’).162
The Societas Iesu standardised its education throughout the world through the implementation of the Ratio studiorum (‘Plan of Studies’), developed primarily by the Collegio Romano since 1586 and revised in 1591 and a few other times.163 Drama is included in this programme as part of rhetorical training. The Ratio delineates the principles governing the utilisation of theatre as an educational instrument. Dramas were to be written in Latin, and no elements were to be incorporated in another language or contrary to the moral principles. Female characters were strictly prohibited, and boys – only they were admitted – were not allowed to play female roles. Even the use of female attire was strictly prohibited:
Tragoediarum et comoediarum, quas non nisi latinas ac rarissimas esse oportet, argumentum sacrum sit ac pium; neque quicquam actibus interponatur, quod non latinum sit et decorum, nec persona ulla muliebris vel habitus introducatur.164
The content of tragedies and comedies that may only be staged in Latin and extremely seldom, shall be sacred and pious [i.e. Christian]. And nothing shall be inserted between the acts that is not Latin and decent. Nor shall any female character or costume be introduced.165
Furthermore, any content that might cause public offence, such as devils, beggars and drunkards, or the use of weapons, was to be avoided. Performances were to be given in the open air, in public, before a noble audience. The Jesuits wrote and read these rules, without always following them. It was only the subsequent edict that stipulated professors from the two highest classes, the poesis (or humanitas) and the rhetorica, should arrange for a theatre play on an annual basis that was observed.
Exercises for dramatic activities such as declamatio were incorporated in the curriculum of the two highest classes, where Seneca’s plays were read. During the summer months, plays by Plautus were incorporated into the curriculum. If comedies by Plautus were read, they were to be purged. Terence’s oeuvre was restricted to the Adelphoe (‘Brothers’), a work focused on education.166
Given that the performances were open to a large, partly non-Latinate audience, consisting of hundreds or thousands of spectators, the authors at least initially, contrary to the rules, included vernacular interludes between the acts in order to make them more comprehensible. Later, spectators were helped by printed programmes (periochae), which provided a synopsis of the action in Latin or in Latin and the vernacular, and listed the characters and the names of the boy actors. Of many plays only these periochae have survived, with no extant text, whether in print or in manuscript.167 Many plays remain anonymous, as the Societas often suppressed the names of the authors, presenting the plays as products of the Order. Nevertheless, this policy did not prevent the names of many Jesuit playwrights from becoming known.
Within the Provincia Flandro-Belgica a structured programme of performances was instituted during the school year.168 These performances were held at the commencement of the academic year, during the carnival in February (ludi bacchanales) and at the conclusion of the year, in late August or early September (ludi autumnales). In the last performances students from all classes participated.
Despite the regulations, performances could be enriched with tableaux vivants, musical accompaniment, dance and pantomime. The use of thunder and lightning and other effects was also a means of impressing the audience. These elements were employed so often and so intensively that these performances could be described as multimedia and mass-media events.169
The Jesuits selected many subjects for their plays: the Bible, the lives of saints, including Ignatius of Loyola and Franciscus Xaverius, martyr stories, ancient pagan history, local history and recent history.170 In short, they addressed any theme that would serve their educational and missionary objectives, including the fight against what they designated as ‘heresies’: Protestant movements. On the other hand, Jesuits adapted their theatrical productions to align with prevailing trends of the Baroque and Enlightenment eras, considering factors such as the available space, their intended audience and financial support.
The periodisation of Jesuit drama, especially in the Upper German Province of the Jesuit Order – the heart of Jesuit activity in the German-speaking countries –, has been the subject of some debate. The conventional division has been into four periods: the ‘Pre-Blossom era’ (with the Jesuit playwright Gretser), the ‘Blossom era’ (Bidermann, Balde, Masen, Avancini), the ‘Post-Blossom era’ (Aler, Claus, Weitenauer) and the ‘era of decline’ (Neumayr, Friz). This division corresponds more or less to the Early, High and Late Baroque and Enlightenment periods. Elida Szarota has proposed another division of the history of Jesuit drama into periods according to the choice of themes: (1) 1572–1622: the drama of religious decision, with ecclesiastical and secular historical themes (martyr plays, conversion plays); (2) 1623–1672: the emergence of confessional and political conflicts; frivolity and debauchery as a product of the Thirty Years’ War (historical events are considered in their richness of conflict; drama becomes more political, dynamic and modern); (3) 1672–early eighteenth century: Turks/Ottomans and familial issues (accusation of innocent women, raising children, parental love and the love of children); (4) early eighteenth century–1730: world-historical themes; a new ideal of the Christian prince; (5) 1730–1773: marked by the influence of the Enlightenment, the ideal of the statesman and the Greco-Roman model.171
Drama was integrated into the Jesuits’ educational activities. During the mid-sixteenth century, in Germany, the Jesuits quickly founded numerous schools, in which theatre was used as an educational tool.172 The first Jesuit play was authored by the Viennese teacher of grammar and Greek Wolfgang Piringer, and it was staged in Vienna in 1559 and again in Munich in the following year.173 In the early phase Father Peter Michael Brillmacher S.J. (1542–1595) was a prolific writer. He taught in various cities, including Mainz, Speyer and Münster. In the epilogue to a performance of his Absolon in Speyer in 157, he thanks the sponsors: Vobis etiam, quorum sumptu omnis hic scenicus | Est factus apparatus, […], gratias dicimus (‘We also thank you, who have borne the cost of this whole production’). In the prologue he explains the lesson to be learned from the play:
in which [play] mankind can see as in a mirror in which vicissitudes God, the Creator of heaven and earth, changes the human condition for the better, and how He never, not even in the midst of danger, abandons people who cast the anchor of their hope on Him.175
This prologue articulates a fundamental tension pervasive in Jesuit drama; namely, the juxtaposition of earthly and heavenly life or the contrast between this world and the next. The audience is exhorted, like David, even when attacked by his son Absolom (2 Kings 13–19), not to lose their trust in God, irrespective of the circumstances.
The most prominent playwright of the first period of Jesuit drama is indisputably Jacob Gretser S.J. (1562–1625), who taught in Fribourg (Switzerland) and Ingolstadt.176 Some of his twenty-two plays are biblical comedies or saints’ dramas, but he also authored a Comoedia de Timone ex Luciano (‘A Comedy about Timon from Lucian’, 1584), drawing inspiration from The Misanthrope Timon of the Greek satirist Lucian (c.125–after 180). In Gretser’s reworking the story of Timon, who spends his money on his companions, is abandoned by them and lives in isolation out of hatred for humanity, thematizes the transience of earthly goods. This dialogue of Lucian also inspired Shakespeare to write Timon of Athens (probably composed in 1606). Gretser’s most successful play is Dialogus Udonis Archiepiscopi Magdeburgensis (‘Dialogue of Udo, Archbishop of Magdeburg’, 1587), which is no more than a dialogue and in which the morally corrupt Archbishop, like Euripus in Brechtus’ play (and Bidermann’s Cenodoxus), falls into hell. The play is situated in a school setting, and it was probably meant as an appeal to the clergy.
Jacob Bidermann S.J. (1578–1639) is widely regarded as the most prominent Jesuit dramatist.177 Of his ten plays, his first, Cenodoxus (‘Doctor Vainglory’, 1602), written in the second period of Jesuit drama and performed in 1602, is the most famous one. Cenodoxus, a teacher at the University of Paris, is the archetype of the hypocritical humanist, obsessed with his earthly glory, which is nothing but vanity. His virtue depends on being visible: Probum | Turba facit; ubi abit arbiter, virtus abit (‘the crowd makes him a good man; when this judge goes, his virtue goes too’, ll. 196–197). In addition to his humanism, he is a representative of Neo-Stoicism with its eradication of emotions. The fifth act recounts the story of Bruno. According to a legend, St Bruno, founder of the Carthusian order, saw in Paris in 1082 the corpse of a doctor who, just before his funeral, rose and cried out: ‘By God’s just judgement I stand accused.’ On the subsequent and the third day something similar happened, with the corpse exclaiming: ‘By God’s just judgement sentence has been passed on me.’ and ‘By God’s just judgement I am condemned.’ In Cenodoxus it is the corpse of the protagonist who does this, in the presence of Bruno: Verendi apud tribunal Iudicis | Accusatus sum (‘For the chair of the fearful Judge, I stand accused’, l. 1772); Iusto Dei iudicio iudicatus sum (‘By God’s just judgement sentence has been passed on me’, l. 1974) and Iusto Dei iudicio damnatus sum (‘By God’s just judgement I am condemned’, l. 2072). While certain critics have considered this legend of Bruno to be unintegrated into the main plot, it is undoubtedly part of it, given that the eleventh-century doctor from Paris is in the same position as Cenodoxus, as he acknowledges at the conclusion of the play:
Bruno
Stat solitudinem asperam sectarier;
Atque inde liberare animum, ubi perdidit Cenodoxus.
Omnes
Idem est animus, est eademque mens.
Bruno
Beate Rector Orbis, animos robora
Caeptumque nostrum prospera. Tibi sedet
Vitam dicare, consecrare, ducere.
Omnes
Valete, Mundi disperite gaudia.178
Bruno
I am resolved to seek the harshest wilderness and thus set free my soul, now I have seen how Cenodoxus lost his.
All
Heart and mind, we are at one with you.
Bruno
Almighty Ruler, strengthen our hearts and prosper our intent. To you we vow and dedicate our lives.
All
Vanish and perish, worldly joys. Farewell.179
The play was performed many times, translated into German by Joachim Meichel in 1635, and published in large numbers by other, anonymous Jesuits in his honour in 1666.180 It suited the time. As Rädle observes, in Bidermann’s dramas: ‘[t]he overarching theme … is the warning of the seductive confidence in the fragile world of Fortune. His characters live and demonstrate the emotional disillusionment of human self-certainty. It is a pessimism obviously fearing the emancipation of modern thought that prevails.’181
The Alsatian Jesuit Jacob Balde (1604–1648) is another famous Jesuit playwright.182 He wrote six Latin plays, among them Iephthias tragoedia (published in 1654), inspired by the 1634 anthology of Jesuit tragedies from the Low Countries, France and Italy.183 His play also belongs to the second period of Blossom (High Baroque). It had already been performed in 1637, when Balde was a professor of rhetoric in Ingolstadt and studying theology. The tragedy deals with Jephthah’s rash vow (Judges 11:30–40), but focuses on the exemplary behaviour of Jephthah’s daughter, here called Menulema, who willingly died for her people. The play should be interpreted allegorically, especially typologically, as a representation of Christ’s love for human souls and his voluntary death. The daughter’s name, an anagram of Emmanuel (‘God with us’, Christ), is a strong indication of this intended prefigurative reading.
In the same period, the Rhineland Jesuit Jacob Masen (1606–1681) published seven dramas: comedies, tragedies, tragicomedies and parables, in Palaestra eloquentiae ligatae (‘School of Bound Rhetoric’ [= bound in metre, poetry], 1657).184 Although the same Masen played an important role in the negotiations that led to the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), he did not take a political stance, but commented on political inconsistencies of his time. One of his plays is the Rusticus imperans (‘The Farmer King for a Day’, 1657).185
A notable distinction of Nicolaus von Avancini (1611–1686) is that he hailed from an aristocratic lineage, a trait distinguishing him from the majority of humanists who emerged from the middle classes.186 During his forty years as a Jesuit theatre maker in Austria he wrote twenty-seven plays, six of which were translations of Italian dramas. His most renowned original play, categorised as one of his ludi caesarei or ‘imperial plays’ is Pietas victrix sive Flavius Constantinus Magnus de Maxentio tyranno victor (‘The Victorious Piety, or Flavius Constantine the Great, Victorious over the Tyrant Maxentius’, 1659). Through the victory of Constantine the Great (Emperor of the Roman Empire 306–337) over his enemy Maxentius at the Pons Milvius in 312, Avancini sketches allegorically the battle between God and the Devil, postfiguratively the battle between Moses and the Egyptian Pharaoh, and prefiguratively the war between the Habsburgs and the Turks.187 The latter interpretation was the more readily made through the idea of translatio imperii from Constantine to Emperor Leopold I (1640–1705). The play concludes with Leopold I, who had been crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire the previous year at the age of 18, awaiting the production of the play. With this play he slid the Company of Jesus into the event at the Pons Milvius, where according to the legend Constantine had a vision: IHS, in hoc signo (vinces), ‘in this sign you will win’, IHS also being the motto of the Jesuits (IHS are also the first letters of the name of Jesus in transliterated Greek). His first play was written and staged in 1640, at the centenary of the Jesuit order, and was called Zelus, sive Franciscus Xaverius Indiarum apostolus. In the play he presented the mission of Francis Xavier to the far East, to instil a zeal for piety in his students, and to incite the Jesuits in the midst of the Thirty Years’ War to reconvert the Protestants, just like Xavier had converted the people from India, China and Japan.188
Working in Vienna, Avancini took advantage of the opportunities offered by the city’s theatre. The theatre, constructed in 1650 by Ferdinand III for the Jesuits, had a capacity of 3,000 and was equipped with machinery. Leopold I was an even more generous ‘Maecenas’. Music, song, dance, tableaux vivants, and spectacular elements such as thunder, lightning, everything could be put on stage. These elements were prompted by the need to contend with the popularity of Italian opera, which boasted opulent spectacle, cherished choruses and celebrated arias.189
In the plays of this era, the action becomes more important than the depiction of the characters, with the moral lesson being imparted not as part of the action, but rather conveyed through prologues, epilogues or interludes. Consequently, elements of piety and propaganda fidei could be obscured by superficial display.190
In the subsequent period, the Post-Blossom or Late Baroque, theatrical elements became even more pronounced.191 A notable example of this transition can be seen in the oeuvre of Paul Aler S.J. (1656–1727), who wrote thirteen Latin and German dramas during this period.192 Aler resided in Cologne for a considerable period, where he engaged in academic pursuits and held teaching positions as a moral theologian. From 1703 to 1713, he served as the rector of the local Collegium Tricoronatum, where he constructed his own theatre, equipped with a variety of mechanical devices, for which he wrote his theatre plays. These dramatic works include biblical dramas such as Tragoediae tres de Iosepho (1703–1705) and De Tobia tragoediae duae (1706), saints’ plays such as De Genovefa (1709) about the fifth-century French saint Genovève, and dramata musica, or musical dramas with arias and choruses Regina gratiae Maria and Regina pacis Maria (Mary, Queen of Grace, 1696 and Mary, Queen of Peace, 1697) and Iulius Maximinus (1697), which was also published in a German adaptation, and Ursula Coloniensis, tragoedia (1710), which is based on the life of a fourth-century local saint.
Another prominent writer was the Viennese court poet Johannes Baptista Adolph (1657–1708), who succeeded Avancini as court dramatist in Vienna.193 His religious tragedies and comedies deviated to a certain extent from those of his predecessor, both in technique and in the choice of subjects. No longer did he focus on the general political or religious dimension, but rather on individual vicissitudes. Furthermore, he commissioned music for his plays from others. In his dramas he included farcical elements such as peasant scenes and German songs, not present in Avancini’s works. Adolph’s plays have survived in manuscript in five volumes, which serves to highlight the significant number of Jesuit plays that were never printed, but instead lost or preserved in manuscripts yet to be discovered and studied.
In contrast, Anton Claus (1691–1754) eschewed the pomp and circumstance of the late Baroque in his historical dramas, performed at the beginning of the school year and collected in Tragoediae ludis autumnalibus datae (‘Tragedies Performed at the Autumn Shows’, 1741).194 The collection comprised the history plays P. Cornelius Scipio sui victor (‘Publius Cornelius Scipio Who Conquered Himself’), Stilicho (the fourth-century Vandal general in the Roman army), Themistocles (the Athenian statesman of the fifth century BCE) and Protasius rex Arymae tragoedia (‘Protasius [a defender of Christianity in Japan], King of Aryma, tragedy’).195
Ignaz Freiherr von Weitenauer S.J. (1709–1783), a theologian of noble birth, translated the Bible into German with annotations and compared the Vulgate with the original. Among the many works of this prolific author are five fate tragedies (Annibal moriens, Arminii corona, Mors Ulyssis, Jonathas Machabaeus, Demetrius Philippi) and one comedy (Ego).196 He returned to a more classical style, but demonstrated his erudition by providing information on his sources, his poetical considerations and the underlying thought in long prose summaries. In Annibal moriens, for instance, the moral is: Qui odio indulget, periculo se exponit (‘He who indulges in hatred exposes himself to danger’).197 His plays fit in well with the ideas of the bourgeois Enlightenment.
The final phase of German Jesuit drama is designated the period of Decline (in the sense of fewer plays) and falls within the period of the Enlightenment. A notable Jesuit dramatist of this period is Franz Neumayr S.J. (1697–1765).198 His work is already embedded in the Enlightenment, particularly the reception of Pierre Corneille as the paradigm of tragedy, as articulated in his poetics, Idea poeseos (1751). Writing a kind of bourgeois family drama, he collected his tragedies, comedies and a musical drama in Theatrum politicum sive tragoediae ad commendationem virtutis et vitiorum detestationem olim ludis autumnalibus nunc typo datae (‘Political Theatre, or Tragedies to Commend Virtue and Detest Vices, Once Performed at the Autumn Festival, Now Printed’, 1760) and his edifying literature in the form of dramas in Theatrum asceticum sive meditationes sacrae in theatre … exhibitae Monachii (‘Theatre of Asceticism or Sacred Meditations … Performed in the Theatre in Munich’, 1747).
The first Jesuit college in the Low Countries was established in Louvain in 1547.199 Other Jesuit activities in the Netherlands took place in the southern part, encompassing present-day Belgium, Luxembourg and parts of northern France. The northern part of the Netherlands had become Protestant and had gained its own sovereignty in a rebellion against the Habsburg rulers. Conversely, the southern Netherlands witnessed the establishment of numerous Jesuit colleges in Antwerp, Bruges and Ghent, as well as Arras, Mons and Douai, to name but a few.200
Johannes David (1545–1613) was one of the Jesuit authors in the Southern Netherlands who was active in Kortrijk, Brussels and Ghent, and who, in the prose comedy Occasio arrepta neglecta (‘The Chance Taken or Neglected’, 1605), combined the character of Fortune, here called Occasio, with the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Matthew 25:1–13), here replaced by ten boys. The message conveyed is that young boys should seize the opportunity to repent and convert.201
Two other Jesuit playwrights from the Low Countries worthy of mention are Malapert and Libens. Carolus Malapertus or Charles Malapert (1581–1630) wrote a Sedecias (‘Zedekiah’, 1624), a story about the Israelite king whose children were killed and who himself was blinded and carried away to Babylon, as told in 2 Kings.202 The play is divided into five acts, with choruses between the acts providing commentary on the action. Drawing inspiration from Hugo Grotius’ Sophompaneas,203 Jacques Libens or Jacobus Libenus S.J. (1603–1678) composed a Joseph trilogy: Iosephus venditus (‘Joseph Sold’, 1634), Iosephus agnitus (‘Joseph Recognised’, 1639), Ioseph patri redditus (‘Joseph Reunited with His Father’, 1656). Notably, both Sedecias and Iosephus venditus were included in the Antwerp collection of Jesuit plays of 1634.204 For a considerable period Netherlandish Jesuits adhered to the Senecan tradition promoted by Daniel Heinsius and Hugo Grotius. Concurrently, they Christianised the Senecan Stoic worldview and accentuated the role of free will.
Following the promulgation of Queen Elizabeth’s Act of Supremacy, which prohibited the practice of Roman Catholicism, the majority of English Jesuits were compelled to seek refuge to the European continent. One of the English colleges was founded in 1592 at St Omer in the southern part of the Netherlands. The most prominent playwright associated with this institution was Joseph Simons, pseudonym of Emmanuel Lobb (1595/96–1671), who wrote plays between 1623 and 1631.205 During his tenure as a teacher at the English College in Rome from 1645 to 1651, he organised spectacular performances of his tragedies. Although he may have written more, five of his tragedies were published. One of these, Leo Armenus (performed in Rome in 1645), inspired Andreas Gryphius (or Greif, 1616–1664) to write his Trauerspiel of Byzantine history, Leo Armenius (1650). A copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio edition (1623) has been preserved in the St Omer college, which may indicate the interest in the English playwright at the English College.206 Another Englishman, Edmund Campion (1539–1581), had fled England to go to Flanders and become a Jesuit in Rome. He worked in Brno, Prague and Vienna and wrote Abrahami sacrificium (‘The Sacrifice of Abraham’, 1575), Tragoedia de Saulo rege (‘Tragedy of King Saul’, 1577) and S. Ambrosius (‘Saint Ambrose’, 1577).207
The first Jesuit college in Italy was established in Messina (Sicily), where tragedies were performed as early as 1551.208 The most famous Jesuit playwrights from Italy were Stefano Tuccio, who started out in Messina, but subsequently relocated to Rome, and Bernardino Stefonio. Another prominent playwright, Francesco Benci (1542–1594), had been a pupil of Muret in France. Benci’s oeuvre includes Latin school comedies characterised by a humanist perspective: Ergastus (‘The Worker’, 1587), Philotimus (‘Lover of Honour’, 1591) and Hercules (1596), and two biblical tragedies, Hiaeus (‘Jehu’, c.1590), the story about Jehu killing the descendants of the morally declining king of Northern Israel, Achab, as told in 2 Kings 10, and Baal eversus (‘The Defeat of Baal’, 1590), a dramatization of 1 Kings 18, on Elijah’s triumph over the priests of the non-Jewish god Baal.
Stefano Tuccio S.J. or Stephanus Tuccius (1540–1597) wrote plays for the Collegio Romano.209 For three of these plays he selected Old Testament themes: Nabuchodonosor (1562, now lost, on the Babylonian king), Goliath (1563, about the Philistine giant defeated by David) and Judith (1564, about the brave Israelite woman from the deuterocanonical book with this title); in addition, he wrote three plays about the earthly and heavenly life of Christ: Christus nascens (1573), Christus patiens (1569 and 1574) and Christus iudex (‘Christ the Judge’, also De extremo mundi iudicio [‘On the Last Judgment’], 1569 and 1573), which concern Christ’s birth, passion and death, and judgement at God’s right hand. The latter was a great success in Italy and abroad. However, Tuccio’s more sober plays soon failed to meet the expectations of the Italian public of the time. Nevertheless, Tuccio’s oeuvre provided the foundation for a theatrical model of sacred representation that would subsequently exert a significant influence on the Italian tragedian Ortensio Scammacca (c.1562–1648), a professor at the Jesuit College of Palermo.
The reorientation towards Latin tragedy was initiated under the influence of Bernardino Stefonio S.J. (1560–1620).210 A professor of rhetoric at the Collegio Romano, he ceased to use biblical themes, opting instead for subjects such as martyrs and figures from Roman history. His first play, Sancta Symphorosa (c.1595), centres on a saint who, along with her seven sons, was killed during the persecutions of Hadrian. In Crispus (1597, 1601), the focus is on Crispus, the son of Constantine the Great, who was accused of rape by his mother-in-law. Constantine consequently condemned his son to death. The plot of this historical and Christian drama bears a striking resemblance to that of Seneca’s Phaedra, also known as Hippolytus. It can be hypothesised that the inspiration for Stefonio may have been derived from the Jesuit Ortensio Scammacca who, in his Italian tragedy Il Crisanto, tragedia morale (published in 1632, but written approximately 10 years earlier), had written a Christianised drama based on the myth of Hippolytus.
For the jubilee year of 1600 Stefonio wrote Flavia, drawing upon Seneca’s Thyestes. This tragedy recounts the tale of Flavius Clemens, the consul who, along with his two adopted sons, was condemned to death by the Emperor Domitian on the very day he converted to Christianity in 95–96 CE.211 He had been betrayed by the pagan philosopher Apollonius of Tyana. The narrative culminates in the execution of Flavius’ two sons before his subsequent pardon. This provoked the wrath of Apollonius. The play originally included female roles, such as Flavius’ wife; however, for a later production, Stefonio removed this scene in order to adhere to the regulations of the Ratio studiorum. In both versions he strongly contrasts pagan religion with the Christian faith. The significance of his oeuvre is underlined by the inclusion of Crispus and Flavia in the Antwerp collection of Jesuit plays of 1634.212 The music for this play was composed by Asprilio Pacelli (1570–1623), maestro di capella at the Collegio Germanico.
During the course of the seventeenth century Italian Jesuits wrote dramas in both Latin and the vernacular, incorporating both Christian biblical and secular themes.
The establishment of the Jesuits in France was met with significant opposition, which hindered their ability to establish an institution of higher learning in this country.213 Due to the opposition of the Parliament it was not until 1563 that the Jesuits were able to establish a college in Paris, the Collège de Clermont (later known as the Collège Louis-le-Grand). Following an incident in 1594, in which a former student of the college assaulted King Henri IV, the Jesuits were expelled from France and were not permitted to return until 1603. After this interval the Society of Jesus experienced a period of significant growth and renown, attracting notable students: Pierre Corneille (1606–1684) studied with the Jesuits in Rouen, Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622–1673) in Paris.214 In their French colleges, the Jesuits also undertook theatrical activities. From 1650 onwards, the majority of the periochae have been preserved, thus enabling the study of the Society’s flourishing theatrical activity. In contrast to the German context, where Latin remained the exclusive language of Jesuit theatre, in France a more diverse linguistic repertoire was employed. The French Jesuits commenced their theatrical endeavours by primarily writing tragedies on biblical and hagiographical themes. However, from the onset of the seventeenth century they also selected subjects from secular history. They demonstrated a marked predilection for certain themes: among the biblical narratives, for example, they selected stories about Judith, Jephthah, Abraham and Isaac, David and Saul, Joseph, Esther and Zedekiah. In these cases they frequently chose subjects from Protestant plays, providing them with a Roman Catholic or Jesuit perspective. When they wrote hagiographical plays, they had a slight preference for saints involved in political struggles, such as St George (a legendary warrior-saint who is said to have slain a dragon), St Hermenegild (a sixth-century Roman Catholic Visigoth prince in Spain who rebelled against his heretical father and was martyred) and St Catherine (a sixth-century Christian patrician woman from Alexandria who rejected the advances of the Roman emperor and died a martyr). The popularity of Gothic subjects is evidenced by the choice of Gothic figures such as the Ostrogothic king Theodoric, who had his friend the Christian philosopher Boethius killed, and the German general in the Roman army Stilicho, who was executed as a traitor in 408. Finally, secular ancient subjects were chosen, such as the Eastern kings Cyrus and Darius, and figures from Roman history such as Julius Caesar, Pompey and the Carthaginians.
The first Jesuit to write and perform plays in France was Father Pierre Mousson (1561–1637), Corneille’s teacher in Rouen.215 He wrote four tragedies on ancient – Graeco-Roman – history: Pompeius Magnus, Croesus liberatus, Cyrus punitus and Darius proditus (‘Pompeius the Great’, ‘Croesus Liberated’, ‘Cyrus Punished’ and ‘Darius Betrayed’), which were collected in Tragoediae seu diversarum gentium et imperiorum magni principes, dati in Theatrum Collegii Regii Henrici Magni (‘Tragedies or Great Rulers from Different People and Empires, Performed in the Theatre of the Collège Henri-IV de La Flèche’), published in 1621. His other tragedies are not extant.
The most prolific and influential French Jesuit playwright was Nicholas Caussin S.J. (1583–1651).216 His collection of plays, Tragoediae sacrae, was published twice in Paris in 1620 and once in Cologne in 1621. This collection comprised the tragedies Solyma (on the sack of Jerusalem and the fall of Zedekiah, 2 Kings 25), Nabuchodonosor (drawn from Daniel 2–4), Felicitas (a second-century saint whose seven sons were killed before she herself was martyred as well) and Hermenegildus (a prose tragedy), which were probably staged from 1615 onwards. As ‘sacred tragedies’, they drew their subject matter from the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, and the lives of saints, and were evidently intended for moral and religious edification. They had a considerable impact, as evidenced by the two reprints and the many adaptations that they inspired.
Some of the tragedies written by the French Jesuits Denis Pétau and Louis Cellot were included in the 1634 Antwerp Selectae Patrum Societatis Jesu Tragoediae.217 Like the plays of the Italians, those of the French Jesuits were considered as exemplary and inspired other Jesuit playwrights.218
Denis Pétau or Dionysius Petavius (1583–1653) taught the rhetoric class at the Collège de Clermont.219 His three plays deal with themes from Old Testament history, Sisaras (1620), from Roman history, Carthaginienses (1614), and from Persian history, Usthazanes, sive Martyres Persici (‘Ustazanes or the Persian Martyrs’, 1620). Two of the plays have a female protagonist: in Sisaras, the Jewish king’s wife Jael who killed the enemy commander Sisara (Judges 4) – a story similar to that of the better-known Judith who killed Holofernes –, and in Carthaginienses, the wife of the Carthaginian military leader Hasdrubal, for which Pétau chose a story told in the work of the second-century Greek historian Appian of Alexandria. The third is about the Persian Christian martyr Ustazanes, a story taken from the fifth-century Historia ecclesiastica by Sozomenus.
Louis Cellot or Ludovicus Cellotius (1588–1657) was the director of the Collège de Rouen and the Collège Henri-IV de La Flèche.220 In 1630 he published three Latin tragedies (Sanctus Adrianus, Sapor admonitus and Chosroës) and a tragicomedy (Reviviscentes, ‘The Reviving’). The first play is about St Adrian, a third-century Roman soldier who converted to Christianity and died as a martyr. The second (Sapor Admonished) is about the Persian king Sapor, who was mistaken for someone else and thrown into prison, thus learning a lesson in humility, according to Cellot. Chosroës is about a Sassanid king who was overthrown by his son in 628. As Jean-Frédéric Chevalier notes,221 there are striking similarities between the first act of Caussin’s Chosroës and the first act of his Theodoricus (1620).
Later authors of Jesuit Latin plays in France included Charles de La Rue, Gabriel François Le Jay and Charles Porée. La Rue and Le Jay greatly influenced their student Pierre Corneille (1606–1684). Their work shows the dominance of tragedy in Jesuit drama at the time. The tragedy Lysimachus (also Agathocles, 1668) by Charles de La Rue or Carolus Ruaeus (1643–1725) was translated into German in 1781 as Lysimachus: Ein Trauerspiel in fünf Aufzügen (Lysimachus: A Tragedy in Five Acts). Lysimachus rises to power with the help of Agathocles, his son from his first marriage, but kills the boy at the instigation of his second wife. La Rue’s other two tragedies, Sylla (1671) and Cyrus (1679), also deal with Greco-Roman antiquity.222
Eustachius martyr (‘The Martyrdom of Eustachius’) by Gabriel François Le Jay (1657–1734) was his first play to be performed, in 1684.223 It is a martyr play about the Roman general Eustachius who was thrown to the lions and boiled in a pot with his family by order of the Emperor Hadrian, after it was discovered that he had become a Christian. Le Jay also wrote a trilogy about Joseph: Josephus venditus (‘Joseph Sold’), Josephus Aegypto praefectus (‘Joseph Viceroy of Egypt’), Josephus fratres agnoscens (‘Joseph Recognising His Brothers’), all printed in 1698. In the preface to the last play, he defends the choice of biblical themes in Jesuit plays, for:
Sunt hac aetate nostra non pauci qui stare belle Tragoediam posse non putant, nisi suum a Fabula historiisve profanis argumentum, venustatem a mollibus Amorum illecebris tantam habeat, adeoque Tragoedias in Collegiis agi solitas idcirco aspernantur, quod illae vel careant Amore tenero, vel argumentum Sacris Litteris aut Christianis Annalibus plerumque acceptum debeant.224
There are many people in this our time who think that a Tragedy cannot stand well, unless it derives its subject from Mythology or secular histories, and its charm from the sweet allure of Love affairs, and therefore despise the Tragedies customarily performed in the Colleges for the very reason that they either lack tender love or that their subject matter must mostly be taken from Sacred Scripture or Christian Annals.
Le Jay accuses these opponents of lacking any substantiation for their views, stating that praesertim ex quo viam sternere visus est Tragicorum apud nos Poetarum nobilissimus, qui Dramata duo quae postrema omnium edidit et a Litteris Sacris mutuatus est et amatoriis omnino spoliavit ornamentis (‘especially since the most noble of our Tragic poets has clearly paved the way, when in the last two Dramas he published, he took his subject matter from Sacred Scripture and completely stripped them of amorous embellishments’).225 The ‘amorous embellishments’ to which he refers, he says, were not found in Greek or Roman tragedies. In the same preface he lauds his pupil Corneille: At quid de ipsis Poetis recentioribus dicemus? Qui de magno illo Cornelio, quem detritae iamdiu ac corruptae tragoediae restitutorem Gallia nostra veneratur? (‘But what shall we say of the more recent poets? Of that great Corneille, whom our France venerates as the restorer of tragedy, long worn down and corrupted?’).226
Le Jay also took a biblical and Christian theme for his fifth play, Daniel (1701); it is only with Croesus (1705) that he chose a non-Christian subject. In accordance with the tenets of French classicist drama, both La Rue and Le Jay – who, as a youth, acted in a play by La Rue – adhered strictly to the five-act structure and to Aristotle’s three unities of time, place and action and refraining from the use of choruses in their tragedies. Le Jay also composed dramata; in the preface to one, Philochrysus seu Avarus (‘Lover of Gold or the Miser’, 1698), he placed Molière above Plautus.
In Brutus (performed in 1708), Charles Porée (1676–1741) selected a theme from the ancient history of Rome.227 The play recounts the expulsion of King Tarquinius and Brutus’ subsequent execution of his own two sons, who sought to restore the Tarquinii to the Roman throne. This pivotal moment in Roman history forms the crux of the dramatic tension between Brutus and the consul, highlighting a poignant dilemma that resonates across the ages:
On the one hand, the country urges the consul, on the other, the father’s love binds the father; the country demands an avenging hand, while nature holds back the same avenging hand. Which of the two will victoriously control my overwhelmed heart? Will the consul prevail over the father, or the father over the consul?
Porée was a highly prolific playwright whose plays were collected in two volumes of Tragoediae (1745) edited by his colleague Claude Griffet. This collection contained six historical and martyr tragedies, including Brutus, Mauricius Imperator (about Maurice, Byzantine emperor in the last few decades of the sixth century) and Hermenigildus (about the Spanish-Visigoth martyr of the sixth century). Porée also saw Fabulae dramaticae (1749, reprinted 1761) published, edited by ‘a fellow Jesuit’, which contained five fabulae or dramata-comica, including a play about a gambling orphan, Paezophilus sive Aleator, drama-comicum (‘Lover of Games or Gambler, a Comic Drama’). The following summary demonstrates Porée’s pedagogical intentions:
Juvenis Parentibus orbatus, per aetatem iuris sui factus, aleae deditus, arte nulla sanabilis, emissis paternis opibus a Patruo exhaeredatur et in eo statuitur exemplum adolescentibus, quam damnosa sit aleae cupiditas.229
An orphaned young man, by age having become a man of his own, becomes addicted to gambling. Unable to be cured in any way and having squandered his father’s fortune, he is disinherited by his uncle. His downfall sets a cautionary example for young people about the destructive consequences of the desire to gamble.
The second play in the collection, Pater amore, vel odio, erga liberos excaecatus, fabula (‘A Father Who Is Blinded by Love or Hatred for His Children, a Play’) is preceded by a prologue in French four-line stanzas. Apparently, Porée’s interests encompassed the education of children, the dynamics between fathers and sons, and the interplay between paternal love and law. He was the last French Jesuit known for Latin drama.
Following their arrival in the Iberian Peninsula, the Jesuits swiftly assumed control of the theatre in schools and universities.230 They founded their first Portuguese colleges in Coimbra (1542/43), Lisbon (1553) and Evora (1553), and their first Spanish colleges in Córdoba (1553) and in Plasencia (1554). In Córdoba an Acolastus, most likely the comoedia sacra by Gnapheus, was performed in 1555 and in Plasencia Dionysio Vásquez’ (1527–1589) Saul furens (Saul’s Madness, 1554).231 The Jesuits’ impact on Spanish literature is evidenced by the fact that the famous playwrights Félix Lope de Vega (1562–1635) and Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681) were educated at Jesuit schools and had their first theatre experiences there.232
The most renowned and prolific Spanish Jesuit Latin playwright with twenty-five – moralising – dramas, was Pedro Pablo de Acevedo or Petrus Paulus Acevedus (1522–1573), who held teaching positions in Córdoba, Seville and Madrid.233 A significant proportion of his oeuvre is characterised by bilingualism, incorporating a blend of Latin and the vernacular Castilian. This practice was customary in the Iberian Peninsula, partly because of the national pride in not merely adopting Latin drama, which was perceived as an import from Italy, and a desire to accommodate audiences who either did not know Latin or did not possess the necessary proficiency to fully comprehend the plays. While in other countries the Jesuits had increased the impact of their plays by printing periochae, here they attempted to achieve a similar effect through bilingual dramas. Another feature of Latin drama in Spain is the incorporation of ‘intermezzi’ satirising academic or school life.
The majority of the dramas composed by Juan Bonifacio (1538–1606), which have been preserved in manuscript, are written in a mixture of Latin and Castilian.234 His oeuvre comprises biblical tragedies such as Jezabel, hagiographic dramas, ‘autos sacramentales’ (liturgical dramas), comedies and a tragicomedy (Tragicomoedia Nabalis Carmelitidis). The works are notable for their realistic depictions of characters drawn from contemporary life. In contrast to the theatrical traditions of other countries, the use of the Latin language in Jesuit drama diminished significantly during the seventeenth century.
Born in Spain, Miguel Venegas (1529–after 1588) worked in Portugal.235 As a teacher in Coimbra, Venegas is known to have created a new type of drama that combined music and theatre and included chorus songs set to music, the tragoedia sacra. His fame transcended the Iberian peninsula, with two of his tragedies being performed at the Collegio Romano: Achabus (‘Achab’, on the story of the king of Israel Achab, his wife Jezebel and their idolatry, told in 1 Kings 16–22) in 1562 and Saul Gelboeus (‘Saul of Gilboa’, the mountain where Saul and his sons were killed, 1 Samuel 31) in 1566. The scope of Venegas’ Saul Gelboeus is further evidenced by the performance of his works not only in this Collegio, but also at Jesuit colleges in France and German-speaking countries. Furthermore, his Achabus was brought to the stage in German cities such as Mainz and Würzburg. In his plays Venegas integrated drama, musical entertainment and the didactic potential of his themes. Venegas was an example of a transnational writer, stationed at the prestigious Colégio Trilingue of Alcalá de Henarez, in Lisbon, Coimbra, Paris and Rome. It is perhaps not surprising that, as a result of his many travels, he suffered from what we would call ‘burn-out’. This may have been the catalyst for his departure from the Jesuit order in 1566. According to Margarida de Miranda, he began the tradition of classicising biblical drama in the Societas Iesu, a development that preceded even the great Italians Tuccio and Stefonio. Venegas’ dramatic works were staged in Rome prior to those of the Italian playwrights.236
Luís da Cruz or Ludovicus Crucius S.J. (c.1542–1604) was a Portuguese Jesuit playwright who, like his teacher Venegas, was employed in Coimbra.237 He was politically engaged and opposed the annexation of Portugal by Spain. This political engagement may have contributed to the fact that he was almost expelled from the Society of Jesus and that the posthumous edition of his theatre plays, Tragicae comicaeque actiones (‘Tragic and Comic Performances’), was not released in Spain, but in Lyon (in 1605). His oeuvre comprises seven plays, including four biblical dramas (Prodigus, 1568; Sedecias, 1570; Josephus, 1572–1577; Manasses restitutus, c.1578), an atypical parade of human vices entitled Vita humana (1572/72), and a pastoral play Polychromius (after 1578). The political connotations of his plays are notable. For instance, the character of Sedecias was – partly – intended to instil rationality into the thoughts and actions of the young and impetuous King Sebastião, while in Polychromius he sided with the Portuguese kings following the Spanish annexation of Portugal. Subsequent to this, and seemingly having embarked upon a more administrative career, he was appointed titular Archbishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia in 1623.
João da Rocha S.J. (1587–1639) was a playwright of the next generation, who embellished his plays with theatrical effects, such as choruses in Spanish and Portuguese, dances and comic scenes with demons, adapting his dramas to Baroque extravagance.238 He employed such effects in his tragicomedy Daniel sapiens honestatus (‘The Wise Daniel Honoured’), which was performed in Coimbra in April 1616 on the occasion of the inauguration of the new buildings of the College of Arts, and in his pastoral play Marsyas, which was also performed in Coimbra at some time in the same year. It is also claimed that he authored a tragicomedy entitled Nabuchodonosor, which is now lost.
It was the Jesuits who brought Neo-Latin dramas to the New World.239 In Mexico Latin dramas of Spanish Jesuits were staged, especially the tragedy Ocio (1586) by Juan Cigorondo (1560–1611), who entered the Society in Mexico City in 1578. In order to enhance the intelligibility of the plays, many of them were written partly or in full in the vernacular. Moreover, in other countries such as Brazil, the Jesuits introduced Latin drama.240 Vice versa, the Jesuits incorporated subjects from the distant countries where they were active as missionaries into their repertoire, showcasing Japan and China on the European stage.241 A notable distinction emerges in the depiction of these two countries. While plays about Japan mostly deal with paganism and superstition, depicting Christian martyrdom, those about China emphasise its rich cultural heritage, exemplified by its philosopher-kings, with little mention of persecutions. The Jesuit playwrights’ representation of China played a significant role in shaping a new and favourable view of China in the early modern period. Additionally, the portrayal of wise and prudent Asian rulers subtly served as a critique of German absolutism.242 Other plays celebrated the Jesuit mission in the Far East and confirmed the importance of the Society, such as Georg Stengel’s Comoedia de Sanctis Patribus Ignatio et Xaverio (1622), performed in Ingolstadt in combination with a procession on the occasion of the canonization of Ignatius, and preserved in manuscript in the library of the University of Munich. The scenes are summarized as follows:
Actvs primvs. Deploratus orbis status Ignatii aetate, eiusque ad Deum conversio. Actvs secvndvs. Gesta ab Ignatio ante societatem confirmatam. Xaverii conversio. Actvs tertivs. Societas confirmatur. Quid a Xaverio in India gestum. Actvs qvartvs. Ignatii Romae et Xaverii in Japonia clara facinora. Actvs qvintvs. Vtriusque foelix e terris in coelum abitus.243
Act One: The deplorable state of the world in the age of Ignatius and his conversion to God. Act Two: The deeds of Ignatius before the Society was confirmed. The conversion of Xaverius. Act Three: The Society is confirmed. What Xaverius accomplished in India. Act Four: The glorious deeds of Ignatius in Rome and Xaverius in Japan. Act Five: The blessed departure of both from earth to heaven.
Jesuit drama also flourished in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe.244 In Poland the name of Gregorius Cnapius S.J. or Grzegorz Knap or Knapski (1564–1639) stands out.245 His plays were transmitted in a manuscript of eight Neo-Latin plays from Poland, which was brought to Uppsala during the period of the Polish-Swedish war of 1655–1660. Three of these plays, namely Tragoedia Felicitas (about the eponymous martyr; written in Vilnius in 1596, performed in Poznan in 1599), Philopater seu Pietas, drama comico-tragicum (‘Father-love or Piety, a Comico-tragical Drama’; written in Vilnius and performed in Poznan in 1600) and Eutropius, tragoedia de immunitate Ecclesiae (‘Eutropius, a Tragedy on the Immunity of the Church’, on the downfall and death of the fourth-century Byzantine consul; written and performed in Lublin in 1604) are certainly written by Cnapius; three are attributed to him, but with less certainty (Odostratocles, Mauritius and Belisarius), and two are anonymous. The last two (Franciscus and Antithemius), written between 1596 and 1627, were part of the Poznan repertoire. As Wimmer rightly points out, the tragedies share stylistic and thematic choices with Bidermann’s plays.246 For instance, the ‘street fighter’ Odostratocles dies a miserable death through his stubbornness after a failed life, a fate akin to that of Bidermann’s Cenodoxus. As Wimmer indicates, Polish Jesuit drama was clearly part of European literature, although it had its peculiarities, such as the frequent use of choruses and prologues in the vernacular.247 A notable example is Antithemius, seu mors peccatoris (‘Antithemius, or the Death of a Sinner’). With unusual social and political criticism, it vividly depicts the social tensions between feudal lords and peasants, a theme particularly salient in the Polish context. A distinctive feature of the play is the chorus rusticorum in Polish, which was originally an independent poem. The play’s central theme is the belief that divine retribution will befall those who commit the sin of exploitation.
In Hungary, divided between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs, school theatre was an important cultural factor.248 Protestant educational institutions were particularly active in the production of theatrical performances, designed as a counterbalance to the activities of the Jesuits, who were the primary foreign society engaged in the composition and performance of plays. This was due to the perceived danger in the country for Western theatre companies, whose actors could be imprisoned or beaten.
Austrian and German plays were also performed in Bohemia, Moravia and other neighbouring countries, which were initially part of the Austrian province of the Order.249 ‘National’ themes prevailed. In Bohemia Saint Wenceslaus (Duke of Bohemia c.905–935) was a popular theme, and in Prague a Constantinus Magnus (‘Constantine the Great’) was performed on the occasion of the coronation of King Ferdinand in Bohemia in 1626 (he had become Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1556). The link thus established between Constantine and Ferdinand was intended to enhance the latter’s fame.
There was a gradual shift in Jesuit drama from Christian-religious plays with a moral lesson to a more secular and political type of drama.250 The Counter-Reformation so to speak gave way to territorial and dynastic considerations. Concomitant with the dramatic performances conducted within educational institutions, such as schools, colleges and universities, there emerged an alternative form of theatre: namely that of dramatic performances conducted at the courts of princes, kings and emperors. Within this context contemporary rulers were often confronted with biblical, ancient or early Christian rulers, who were regarded as exemplars to emulate or as cautionary figures to be avoided. Even after the suppression of the Societas Jesu in 1773, Jesuits continued to perform and even write plays, albeit on a reduced scale. Consequently, the Jesuits had long dominated the Latin theatre in many, though not all, European countries in Europe.
To summarise, Jesuit theatre emerged as part of the order’s mission to propagate and defend Catholicism, especially against Protestantism. Integrated into Jesuit education through the Ratio studiorum, drama served as a tool for moral and rhetorical training. Plays, often anonymous, followed strict rules, but adapted to audiences by incorporating vernacular elements or providing them with printed programmes. Yet, Jesuit drama developed slightly differently in different countries. In Germany the rules of the Ratio were quite strictly observed, and plays were performed almost exclusively in Latin, whereas in Italy and the Iberian peninsula vernacular elements were included. Elements such as farcical scenes, vernacular songs and commissioned music became more common, as a concession to the public, as well as multimedia elements such as music, dance and special effects, reinforcing religious, missionary and educational goals. Many works in the vast, yet partially lost, Jesuit theatrical tradition remained in manuscript, unpublished. In the southern Netherlands Jesuit playwrights, influenced by the Senecan tradition, often Christianized Stoic themes and emphasized free will. Due to religious persecution in England, many English Jesuits sought refuge on the European continent, with institutions such as the English Colleges at St Omer and Rome playing a key role in Jesuit drama. The St Omer college preserved a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio, suggesting an interest in English drama. It Italy the shift from biblical tragedies towards a broader theatrical tradition, which included martyrdom stories, Roman history, and Christianised versions of classical themes, reflected changing audience expectations and contributed to the development of sacred theatrical traditions in Italy.
French Jesuit theatre developed despite early opposition, gaining prominence after 1603. Initially centred on biblical and hagiographical themes, it adapted Protestant plays to a Catholic perspective and later expanded to secular and historical subjects, including Gothic and Greco-Roman figures. Tragedy dominated, often emphasizing martyrdom, moral dilemmas and political struggles. By the late seventeenth century Jesuit theatre was a well-established educational and religious tool, influencing figures like Pierre Corneille.
Jesuit theatre in the Iberian Peninsula quickly flourished, integrating bilingualism to reach broader audiences. Unlike in other regions, Latin plays in Spain and Portugal incorporated Castilian and featured satirical intermezzi. Theatrical works ranged from biblical tragedies to liturgical dramas and political allegories. Music and choral elements enriched performances. By the seventeenth century Latin theatre declined in favour of vernacular productions, adapting to Baroque tastes with elaborate effects. Jesuit drama influenced major playwrights like Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca.
Jesuits introduced Neo-Latin drama to the regions outside Europe where they were active, adapting plays into vernacular languages for accessibility. In Mexico and Brazil Spanish Jesuit works were performed, while European Jesuits integrated themes from far countries into their repertoire. In their plays depictions of Japan focused on Christian martyrdom, whereas China was presented as a land of wisdom, subtly critiquing European absolutism or opposing the Protestant Reformation. Jesuit theatre also celebrated missionary achievements, reinforcing the Society’s global influence. Plays like Georg Stengel’s Comoedia de Sanctis Patribus Ignatio et Xaverio and Nicolaus Avancini’s Zelus, sive Franciscus Xaverius Indiarum apostolus highlighted the lives and legacies of Ignatius and Xavier, blending religious devotion with theatrical spectacle.
Jesuit drama thrived in Eastern and central Europe, particularly in Poland, where Gregorius Cnapius’ Neo-Latin tragedies blended moral lessons with local themes. The Antithemius highlighted social tensions between feudal lords and peasants. Hungarian Jesuit theatre faced Protestant competition, while Austrian and German plays influenced Bohemia and Moravia, often celebrating national figures like Saint Wenceslaus. Over time, Jesuit drama shifted from religious themes to political and dynastic concerns, aligning rulers with biblical or historical figures. Despite the Society’s suppression in 1773, Jesuit theatrical traditions endured for some decades, maintaining their influence in Latin theatre.
9 The Drama of Other Orders
The omnipresence of the Jesuits has often overshadowed the contributions of other religious orders, such as the Augustinians, the Oratorians, the Minorites, the Premonstratensians and the Piarists, who also wrote and performed Latin plays.251 However, the order that ranked second to the Jesuits in this regard was that of the Benedictines, who were particularly active during the latter half of the seventeenth century.252 There were significant differences between the Jesuits and the Benedictines. The Jesuits’ endeavours to bring ‘heretics’ back into the Church were quite militant, while the Benedictines were more irenic. As Roloff asserts: ‘The Benedictine theatre did not seek to convert its audience, but to entertain them in an intelligent and educated way, with Christian moral ideas, but without religious dogmatic tendencies.’253 Within the Benedictine order it was not the teachers of the poesis or rhetorica classes who were obliged to write dramas, but those who possessed the necessary skills and expertise in this domain. The two most important centres of Benedictine activity were Salzburg and Kremsmünster Abbey, located near Linz in Austria. Both places boasted impressive theatres, equipped with a variety of theatrical devices, which facilitated the presentation of a diverse array of performances. The kind of theatre performed there also rivalled Italian opera. While many Benedictine writers are known by name, further research is required to explore their contributions in greater depth.
The most famous figure was the Austrian Benedictine monk, historian, lawyer and orientalist Simon Rettenpacher or Rettenbacher O.S.B. (1634–1706). After studying in Salzburg and Rome, he became professor of ethics and history in Salzburg, and he was the director of the theatres in Salzburg (1672–1676) and in Kremsmünster (1676–1689).254 His Dramata selecta, which comprises nine of his dramas (including musicals), was printed in Salzburg in 1683. Their main themes are taken from antiquity, and they typically have a large cast of characters. Roloff indicates that their plots take place on three levels: ‘the supernatural world, which is represented by allegories’ and ‘the courtly-political world’, which ‘are closely connected’ and in which ‘the impulses for the actions in the earthly realm would come from the former, and the allegories are never mixed into the main action’. ‘The third level’, Roloff states, ‘is the world of soldiers, citizens and peasants, which, however, has no logical connection with the main action and its moral content; it is to be understood in terms of worldly and material pleasures and, with its often drastic actions, complements the drama to form a self-contained world’.255 The double titles of his plays represent a subversion of the conventional order (e.g. Iephthes sive votum): Innocentia dolo circumventa seu Demetrius Philippi Macedonum Regis filius, insidiis fratris Persei crudeliter peremptus (‘Innocence Afflicted by Deceit, or Demetrius, the Son of Philip, King of Macedonia, Cruelly Killed by the Ambush of his Brother Perseus’, 1672).256 The final words of the play may offer a glimpse into Rettenpacher’s world view of guilt and atonement: Peream cruentus. Sola mors misero est salus (‘Let me die, stained with blood. Only death can save a wretch’).257 In addition to this, Rettenpacher wrote a peace play, Pax terris reddita (‘Peace Brought Back on Earth’), and an opera, Iuventus virtutis (‘The Youth of Virtue’). In the Netherlands the Benedictine Lummenaeus a Marca was an important author of Latin tragedies.258
While Jesuits dominated Latin theatre, other religious orders, especially the Benedictines, also contributed significantly. Unlike the Jesuits’ militant approach to conversion, Benedictine theatre was more irenic, aiming to entertain and educate with moral themes rather than dogma. Their drama rivalled Italian opera and featured elaborate theatrical devices. Benedictine plays often depicted three interconnected worlds: the supernatural, the courtly-political and the everyday realm of commoners. Their works explored themes of power, deceit and atonement, reflecting a sophisticated blend of moral instruction, entertainment, and political allegory.
This overview presents Neo-Latin drama in geographical, chronological and denominational distributions, with an emphasis on authors rather than plays. This is done for the sake of clarity, in the awareness that it does not do justice to the huge amount of interrelations between authors from different countries and different beliefs, nor to the enormous quantity of anonymous plays that have survived in manuscript or the many plays that have been lost nor to the fact that in some cases authors were inspired by much earlier plays. Some of these relations will be indicated in this section; a more systematic discussion will be given below, in the section ‘Transnationality of Neo-Latin drama’, pp. 101–7.
The Latin text and an English translation are found in Grund 2011: 2–47. On this play, see also Chevalier 2013: 28–32. For Mussato’s coronation, see Gillespie 2005: 217.
Grund 2011: xx.
Mussato, Ecerinis, ll. 616–29; see also Dietl 2013: 95.
Trans. Grund 2011: 45 and 47.
For the development of Neo-Latin drama in Italy, see Roloff 1965: 647; Wimmer 1999: 7; Chevalier 2013.
See for an English trans. Grund 2011: 48–109 and for a French trans. Chevalier 2010: 1–97. On this play, see also Chevalier 2013: 32–35.
See Chevalier 2013: 32.
See Grund 2011: 110–87; Chevalier 2010: 89–207. On the play, see also Chevalier 2013: 36–37.
See Grund 2011: 188–243; Chevalier 2010: 209–88; Chevalier 2013: 38–39.
Chevalier 2013: 39–40 also thinks of revenge and a hero seeking recognition as central themes.
See Roloff 1965: 647; Chevalier 2013: 45–46.
For an ed. and trans. of Historia Baetica see Villarroel 1971, and for an ed. and trans. of Fernandus servatus see Grund 2011: 244–91. See also Chevalier 2013: 40–43.
Griffin 2017: 225.
Roloff 1965: 647.
See, e.g., Lehnerdt 1923; Chevalier 2013: 53–54.
See Grund 2005: 2–69.
See Grund 2005: 70–169; Chevalier 2013: 58–61.
See Chevalier 2013: 61.
Medius 1974. On the play, see also Chevalier 2013: 64–65.
See Chevalier 2013: 43–44 and 65–66; Harmonius Marsus 1971.
Armonio Marso, Stephanium, ‘Argumentum’.
See Sottili 1971: 1–14; Sottili 1993: 99–373; Reuchlin 2024: 10–11.
See Ruggio 2018: 120. On Epirota, see above, p. 9.
See, e.g. Bloemendal and Norland 2013: 9; Roloff 1965: 649. Early examples are Erasmus’ Latin translations of Euripides’ Hecuba and Iphigeneia (1506).
See, for instance, Roloff 1965: 651–53; Griffin 2017: 227–29.
See Dietl 2013: 105.
See Dietl 2013: 105–06; Wattenbach 1869; Coppel and Kühlmann 2010.
See Dietl 2013: 105–06.
See Dietl 2013: 107–09; Roloff 1965: 651–52; modern editions in Wimphelingius 1892; Wimpheling 1971.
See Dietl 2013: 109.
See Adam 1995.
See, e.g., Dietl 2013: 127–29; Roloff 1965: 652; Meier 2009.
See above, p. 5.
See Dietl 2013: 109–10; Reuchlin 2024.
See Rädle 1988.
Reuchlin, Henno, ll. 229–32/230–35.
Cf. Reuchlin 2024: 69.
See Giebels and Slits 2005; Bloemendal 2009a. On Macropedius’ reception of Reuchlin’s Henno, see also Bloemendal 2013a: 298–301.
See Korsten 2009.
See on this play, e.g., Bloemendal 2009b.
Euanthius, De fabula 3.1.
See Demoed 2011; a modern edition with an English trans. can be found in Gnapheus 1964, and, with a Dutch trans., in Gnapheus 1956; see also Rädle 2013: 205–08; Bloemendal 2013a: 305–06; Bloemendal 2024c.
See Jørgensen 1975; Kaae 1977: 58; Bloemendal 2003: 61.
See Moore Smith 1923: 5, 104.
Modern edition by Carver in Palsgrave 1937.
On this commentary, see Bloemendal 2021.
See Pascual Barea 2013: 552–53.
Sixt Birck, Prologus 21–25.
See Gnapheus 2010. The word morosophus is used by Erasmus in Stultitiae laus, see Erasmus 1979: 74, l. 76 and 75 n., referring to Lucian, and the prolegomena of the Adagia (Erasmus 1993: 72, ll. 567–68).
See Dietl 2013: 155–57.
See Levinus Brechtus, Euripus Tragoedia Christiana (1549), ed. Fidel Rädle with contemporary German trans. by Cleophas Distelmayer, in Rädle 1979: 1–293, 524–55; Valentin 1972: 81–188; Wimmer 1982: 106–17.
Erasmus 1989: 215–16; Erasmus, Adagia 862, see Erasmus 1998: 382–84: ‘Euripus homo’.
On Locher’s dramas, see Dietl 2005 and Dietl 2013: 112–14; 117–20; 142–44.
Edition and translation in Adel 1960: 90–105.
Modern edition in Schottenius Hessus 1990. See also Roloff 1965: 653; Dietl 2013: 161–62.
Overviews in, e.g., Bahlmann 1893; Roloff 1965: 655–64; Dietl 2013; Bloemendal 2013a.
See Peverelli 2025a: 57–71.
On the Reformation in the Netherlands, see Kooi 2022.
Roloff 1965: 655.
See Roloff 1965: 658–59; Roloff 2003; Dietl 2013: 150–54; Watanabe-O’Kelly 2015: 317–31. Naogeorgus’ plays are edited by Roloff in 1975– in Naogeorgus 1975–. Pammachius is translated in Love 1995.
Norland 2013: 478–79.
Edited by Roloff in Naogeorgus 1986 and by Bolte 1927: 161–319. See Roloff 1965: 658; Dietl 2013: 153.
Roloff 1965: 658.
Martin Luther: ‘Vorrede auffs Buch Tobie’, quoted from Dietl 2013: 148.
Trans. Dietl 2013: 148.
See, e.g. Roloff 1965: 663; Urtel 2015.
Roloff 1965: 663.
On his works, see, e.g., Tschopp 2010. His Latin plays are edited in Birck 1976 and 1980. See also Roloff 1965: 569–70; Dietl 2013: 149.
See Wimmer 1999: 24; Dietl 2013: 165–67. On Strasbourg as a hub of Neo-Latin drama, see Kindermann 1986: 9–171: ‘Publikum und Lebenswirkung des Humanisten- und Schultheaters’, esp. pp. 30–41.
See, e.g. Griffin 2017: 226.
McFarlane 1981: 194–95. See also below, pp. 26–38.
Roloff 1965: 664.
A bibliographical overview of French Neo-Latin plays is given in Bolte 1900. For an overview of Neo-Latin drama in France, Portugal and Spain, and Italy, see Ferrand 2013; Pascual Barea 2013, and Chevalier 2013; Wimmer 1999: 7 and 8–11; see also Kindermann 1986: 77–101 (France); 122–33 (Spain and Portugal).
See McFarlane 1981; Wimmer 1999: 8–9.
See Buchanan 1983. On Buchanan’s tragedies, see also Ferrand 2013: 392–95.
On this controversy and Buchanan’s point of view, see Stone 1966: xi–xix, and Wimmer 1999: 9.
A modern edition in Vondel 1927–1937, vol. 8: 769–850.
A modern edition in, e.g., Hagmaier 2006.
Wimmer 1999: 8.
Wimmer 1999: 9.
See Wimmer 1999: 8; Ferrand 2013: 365–66.
Wimmer 1999.
Wimmer 1999. See also Lebègue 1929: 169–93 (Ch. 9: ‘Nicolas Barthélemy’) and Balavoine 1979.
Wimmer 1999. A modern edition of the play can be found in Quintianus Stoa 2002.
See Wimmer 1999: 9–10 and Pascual Barea 2013, and for Portugal, see also Frèches 1964.
See above, pp. 22–23.
Wimmer 1999: 10.
See Wimmer 1999: 10–11; Pascual Barea 2013.
See above, p. 9.
Wimmer 1999: 10–11.
Val Gago Saldaña 2012.
See Wimmer, 1999: 11; Nodes 2017.
See Wimmer 1999.
Modern edition by Rimbault in Satorres 2020.
See pp. 41–46. For this second phase, see Roloff 1965: 664, who, however, takes 1675 as the end of this phase.
On the role of the Strasbourg academy, see also Roloff 1965: 667–69; Kindermann 1986: 58–59.
On Sturm, see above, p. 22.
On the Commedia dell’arte, see, e.g., Chaffee and Crick 2014; Balme, Vescovo and Vianello 2018; on the English troupes, see, e.g., Oppitz-Trotman 2020. On the Jesuits, see below, pp. 41–66.
Its full title runs: Daniel, comoedia nova, qua historia Belis et Draconis continetur (Strasbourg: Antoine Bertram, s.a.).
Meierus, Daniel, fol. Diiijv.
Meierus, Daniel, fol. G5[2]v.
See, e.g., Roloff 1965: 668; Wimmer 1999: 26; Valentin 2004.
See Dietl 2013: 167; On Brülow, see Kühlmann 2013.
See Hanstein 2013; on the borrowings of other plays, esp. 505–14.
For Frischlin’s plays, see the editions by Kaminski et al. in Frischlin 1992–2013. See also Roloff 1965: 664–65; Price 1990.
See Baier 2000.
Roloff 1965: 665.
See Elschenbroich 1976; Dietl 2013: 170–72.
See Dietl 2013: 173.
On Schonaeus, see van de Venne 2001–2003; Bloemendal 2013: 332, 333–35; Roloff 1965: 666, degrades him as a ‘pedantic nerd’. On his dramas, see also Kindermann 1986: 74–76; Wimmer 1999: 30–31.
Wimmer 1999: 30–31.
On him, see Fontaine 2020.
See Burmeister 2015 and Fontaine 2020.
See Wimmer 1999: 28 and 30; see also Roloff 1965: 666–67.
See, e.g., Bolte 1886–1887; Wimmer 1999: 30.
Modern edition in Valentin Andreae 2018; see also Roloff 1965: 671; Wimmer 1999: 29–30.
Valentin Andreae 1849: 10: ‘Iam a secundo et tertio post millesimum sexcentesimum coeperam aliquid exercendi ingenii ergo pangere, cuius facile prima fuere Esther et Hyacinthus comoediae ad aemulationem Anglicorum histrionum iuvenili ausu factae’ (‘As early as 1602 and 1603 I began to write something to train my mind, of which the comedies Esther and Hyacinthus were easily the first, written in youthful daring to rival English actors’).
See Roloff 1965: 670; Wimmer 1999: 28.
See the edition by Bolte 1933. On the dramas of Rhodius, see also Kühlmann 1989.
See Roloff 1965: 671–72; Wimmer 1999: 30–31; Dietl 2013: 173–74.
See Bloemendal 2013a: 347. For a modern edition of the play, see Roulerius 1906.
See Bloemendal 2013a: 342–44 and 348.
The Grotius tragedies were edited in Grotius 1976, 1977 and 1992; for Heinsius’ play, see Heinsius 2020; Bloemendal is preparing an edition of Herodes infanticida.
Sandys 1640; Goldsmith 1652.
Vondel 1927–1937, vol. 10: 94–170 and vol. 3: 431–82, resp.
Heinsius 2001.
See Corneille 1906: 66–67: ‘Examen’.
A modern edition in Bolte 1933. See also Sarasti-Wilenius 2013: 674–77.
Bloemendal 2013a: 349. On Libenus, see below, p. 52.
On Vernulaeus’ dramas, see Parente 2016.
See the edition and English trans. in Schuster 1964. On Vernulaeus see also Bloemendal 2013a: 349–50.
See Gruijters 2010; Bloemendal 2013a: 350–51.
On academic drama, see Boas 1966; Walker and Streufert 2008; Sandis 2022. On Neo-Latin drama in England, see Wimmer 1999: 11; Norland 2013. On the place of English academic drama in English literary history, see Blank 2023. Facsimile editions are offered in Spevack and Binns 1981–1991; see also Kindermann 1986: 101–22.
Giebels and Slits 2005: 229. On the play, see also above, p. 13.
Norland 2013: 484–87.
See Merrill 1925; Norland 2013: 477–78.
In Augsburg and Cologne in 1543 and again in Cologne in 1548.
See Norland 2013: 478–80 and 2014. On Pammachius, see above, p. 19.
See, e.g., Norland 1993.
See, e.g., Wimmer 1999: 36; Ryan 2014; Norland 2013: 510–14.
See Kindermann 1986: 146–52; Bloemendal 2013b: 633–56.
Bloemendal 2013b: 640.
See also below, p. 103.
Cesnaková 2013.
See Kindermann 1986: 141–46.
On the Jesuits, see below, pp. 41–66; see also Kindermann 1986: 152–62.
Comenius’ Diogenes Cynicus redivivus and Abrahamus patriarcha are edited by Julie Nováková, in Havránek et al. 1973; see also Cesnaková 1989; Bloemendal 2013b: 640–42; Lurie and Mashevskaya 2023.
See Kindermann 1986: 131–41; Skafte Jensen 1995; Wimmer 1999: 37; Sarasti-Wilenius 2013.
Sarasti-Wilenius 2013: 665–66.
Kindermann 1986: 134.
See Jørgensen 1975.
See Hegelund 1888.
Kindermann 1986: 135.
Notable examples of the extensive scholarship on the Jesuits include Chapple 1993, Schatz 2013, O’Malley 2014 and Grendler 2018. An overview of Jesuit historiography is given by Eickmeyer 2018.
Grendler 2018.
See, e.g., Wimmer 1999: 15.
Bahlmann 1896b; Roloff 1965: 672–76; Griffin 1976 and 1986; McCabe 1983; Wimmer 1999: 12–23; 38–46; Valentin 2001; Zammar 2016; Gallo 2019.
On the play, see above, p. 16; on its role in Jesuit education, see Valentin 1972: 106–17 (‘Der konfessionelle Einsatz: “Euripus”’).
Oldani and Yanitelli 1999; Wimmer 1999: 13; Rädle 2013: 202–04.
Roloff 1965: 672.
On this collection see Parente 2023: 48–56. Parente considers Cnobbarus’ anthology as a counterpart to the popular political dramas by Heinsius and Grotius: ‘His own Selectae tragoediae may well have been assembled to circulate and enrich the repertoire of Catholic representations of political and religious controversy during this period of continued conflict in which confessional allegiances, public responsibilities, and private ambitions were inextricably intertwined’ (Parente 2023: 55–56); see also Valentin 2001: 558.
Lukács 1986: 357–454.
Ratio studiorum 1599, Lukácz 1986: 371.
Trans. Rädle 2013: 217.
Rädle 2013: 211–12.
Szarota 1979–1987.
On the Jesuit theatrical practices in the Provincia Flandro-Belgica, see the publications by Joran (Goran) Proot, for instance Proot 2008.
Roloff 1965: 673; Szarota 1975; Mahlmann-Bauer 1994.
Roloff 1965: 672.
Szarota 1974. For the traditional periodisation, see Roloff 1965: 672–76; for a critical discussion, see Pohle 2010: 248–62 (‘Anmerkungen zu einer Periodisierung des Jesuitentheaters’).
Roloff 1965: 673. See also above, p. 42.
Roloff 1965: 673.
Michael, Absolon, prologue.
Cf. trans. Rädle 2013: 232.
Dürrwächter 1912; Roloff 1965: 674; Wimmer 1999: 14; Valentin 2001: 301–33; Rädle 2013: 274–76.
Roloff 1965: 674; Wimmer 1982: 173–249; Valentin 2001: 335–86 (on Cenodoxus, esp. 347–53); Rädle 2013: 276–78. The name Cenodoxus is inspired by Philippians 2:3.
Bidermann, Cenodoxus, ll. 2228–34.
Bidermann 1975: 197.
Meichel’s translation can be found in Bidermann 1965; the play itself in Bidermann 1967.
Rädle 2013: 278.
Roloff 1965: 675; Wimmer 1999: 41–42; Valentin 2001: 546–67; Stroh s.a. and 2004; Rädle 2013: 281–82.
Valentin 2001: 555–67; Führer 2003; Rädle 2013: 281–82; Balde 2020; Dänzer 2020. On the 1634 Antwerp anthology, see above, p. 42.
See Roloff 1965: 675; Halbig 1987; Wimmer 1999: 42; Valentin 2001: 577–99; Rädle 2013: 283.
Edited in Burger 1969; on its classical sources, see Manuwald 2014.
Roloff 1965: 675–76; Sieveke 1986; Valentin 1986; Wimmer 1999: 40–41; Valentin 2001: 526–33 and 601–87; Rädle 2013: 284.
Wimmer 1999: 40.
See Schaffenrath 2021.
See Schaffenrath 2021: 42.
See, e.g., Bloemendal 2013a: 341.
Roloff 1965: 676.
See Pohle 2019; Wimmer 1999: 43.
Adel 1952/53; Sieveke 1965; Wimmer 1999: 43.
Valentin 2001: 166 and 182.
See Wirthensohn 2018.
Kellner 1958; Paul 2016; see also Witek 2009: 157–66.
Weitenauer 1758, fol. A4v; Annibal moriens, ed. in Paul 2016: 45.
Gumbel 1937; Roloff 1965: 676; van der Veldt 1992; Enenkel 2016.
On Jesuit drama in the Low Countries, see van den Boogerd 1961.
Bloemendal 2013a: 333.
Simoni 1976; Wimmer 1999: 21.
de Vriendt 1999; Wimmer 1999: 21. Edition of the play in Hernot 1943.
See above, pp. 33–34.
On the Knobbaert collection, see above, p. 42; on Libens and his plays, see, e.g., Van den Boogerd 1961: 137–58; Wimmer 1999: 33 and 38–39; Bloemendal 2013a: 355.
For a translation, see Oldani and Fischer 1989; on Simons and his plays, see McCabe 1983: 133–43; Parente 1983; Wimmer 1999: 43–44.
Mayer 2015.
See Waugh 1954; Wimmer 1999: 18; Norland 2013: 525.
Wimmer 1999: 16 and 44.
Wimmer 1999: 16 and 44; Saulini 2008.
Fumaroli 1975; Wimmer 1999: 16; Saulini 2014; Saulini 2024.
On this play, see Hoxby 2016. An edition is provided by Mirella Saulini in Stefonio 2021.
See above, p. 42.
For this paragraph, see Wimmer 1999: 17 and 44; Chevalier 2013b; O’Malley 2014: 39–40; see also above, p. 42.
See, e.g. Wimmer 1999: 45; O’Malley 2014: 30.
See Gärtner 2007; Chevalier 2013b: 451–53.
See Hocking 1943; Valentin 2001: 489–95; Chevalier 2013b: 431–40; 448–50.
See above, p. 42.
See, e.g., Wimmer 1999: 17–18.
Chevalier 2013b: 434–37; 446–47; 453–58.
See Chevalier 2013b: 440–48.
See Chevalier 2013b: 439.
On La Rue, see Wimmer 1999: 45; Chevalier 2013b: 458–59.
On Le Jay, see Wimmer 1999: 45; Chevalier 2013b: 460–61.
Le Jay, Joseph fratres agnoscens, fol. Aijr.
Ibid., fol. Aijv. Le Jay refers to Jean Racine’s Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691), taken from the Book of Esther, and the story of the Queen of Judah Athaliah from 2 Kings 8–11 and 2 Chronicles 22–24.
Ibid., fol. Aiiijv.
On Porée, see Chevalier 2013b: 461–62. Chevalier (2013: 461) mentions that Porée’s pupil Voltaire was inspired by this Brutus to write his tragedy Brutus (1730).
Porée, Brutus, ll. 1202–06, Latin quoted after Chevalier 2013b: 461–62 as well as the translation, but with modifications.
Porée 1749, fol. Av.
See Wimmer 1999: 19–20 and 46; Pascual Barea 2013.
Wimmer 1999: 20–21. On Gnapheus’ Acolastus, see above, pp. 14–15.
O’Malley 2014: 30.
Wimmer 1999: 20; Menéndez Fernández 2007; Pascual Barea 2013: 580–83.
González Gutiérrez 1994; Wimmer 1999: 20; Pérez Delgado 2006; Pascual Barea 2013: 583–87.
See Frèches 1964: 175–239; Wimmer 1999: 18–19; Pascual Barea 2013: 576–79; Miranda 2019.
Miranda 2019: 149.
See Frèches 1964: 240–423; Wimmer 1999: 19; Pascual Barea 2013: 578–80.
See Frèches 1964: 434–46; Wimmer 1999: 19.
See Rojas Garciadueñas 1935; Alonso Asenjo 2011 (includes Latin America, the Caribbean and the Philippines); Pascual Barea 2013: 592–93 and passim.
Hessel and Raeders 1972.
Hsia and Wimmer 2005; Oba, Watanabe and Schaffenrath 2022. On the Jesuit mission, especially that of Matteo Ricci, in China, see, e.g., Standaert 2008.
Oba, Watanabe and Schaffenrath 2022.
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, sig. 4 ° Cod. ms. 511, quoted from https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/22212/ (accessed 13 June 2025); the summaries of each act are given on fols. 2v; 15r; 31r; 45r; and 73r. For the performance, see Wimmer 1999: 41; on the play, see also Valentin 2001: 517–21.
See Bloemendal 2013b.
See Wimmer 1999: 22–23; Bloemendal 2013b: 649–50.
Wimmer 1999: 22.
Wimmer 1999: 23.
See above, p. 4; on the Jesuits’ presence in Hungary, see Mihalik 2024; on Jesuit drama in Hungary, see Wimmer 1999: 23; Bloemendal 2013b: 635–39.
See Wimmer 1999: 21–22; Bloemendal 2013b: 639–40.
See on the development for instance Gallo 2019.
On Augustinian Latin drama, see Teeuwen 1950; De Sutter 2019. For a comparative study, see Dyer 2010. On the Piarists, see Biba 1975.
On the Benedictine theatre, see Roloff 1965: 676–78; Wimmer 1999: 46–48; Witek 2009.
Roloff 1965: 676.
Witek 2009: 140–55 (also with an analysis of Rettenpacher’s Innocentia dolo circumventa, seu Demetrius [1672]); Wimmer 1999: 48.
Roloff 1965: 677.
See Witek 2009: 140–55.
Rettenpacher, Demetrius, l. 1676 (ed. Jan-Wilhelm Beck (https://www.uni-regensburg.de/assets/sprache-literatur-kultur/lateinische-philologie/fabulae-neolatinae/praetextae/rettenpacher__demetrius.pdf)) (cf. Universität Mannheim, Camena: https://mateo.uni-mannheim.de/camena/retten1/Rettenpacher_dramata.html [accessed 13 June 2025]).
See above, p. 35.