Latin drama, religion and politics in early modern Europe

Renaissance Studies, 2016

This article explores the relationship between religion and neo-Latin drama in the Low Countries from the mid sixteenth until the early part of the seventeenth century and argues that the central importance of neo-Latin drama to the teaching of early modern students reveals much about contemporary attitudes towards religion and theology. To investigate the relationship between plays and religious teaching more fully, I discuss representative works by both Protestant and Roman Catholic authors, shaped by different experiences in the northern and the southern parts of the Netherlands. Before moving to a more focused analysis of specific plays, which range from the 1530s to the 1610s, I define the terms 'religion' and 'theology' as used in this study and address the immediate historical and religious contexts of the period, identifying in particular how social and political changes in the region affected the writing of neo-Latin drama and the education of boys and young men. A HISTORICAL CONTEXT The sixteenth century witnessed tumultuous changes in the Low Countries' urbanization, which led to a kind of nouveau riche class of merchants in the cities. Socially and intellectually ambitious for their offspring, these men wanted their children to be educated according to the latest pedagogical trends, and it was humanists who were able to provide that new education, with the result that the medieval parish and chapter schools were gradually reformed into 'new' city schools where programmes of humanist teaching could be efficiently carried out. The main objectives of these new institutions were that pupils should turn as soon as possible on entering the schoolroom to reading classical authors, and to practising communication in Latin, and that they should also learn Greek, albeit to a far lesser extent. These educational developments were inevitably influenced by changes in religious loyalties in the Netherlands during the same period, when the Roman Catholic Church lost its absolute power and some of its former faithful converted to reformed denominations, as was happening across contemporary Europe. The most famous of these denominations, of course, which proved to be extremely significant in V

Bulletin of the Comediantes, 2017

and Hotei Publishing. Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of offprints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re-use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Contents List of Illustrations vii About the Authors viii Introduction 1 Jan Bloemendal and Nigel Smith part 1 Sovereignty 1 What Roman Paradigm for the Dutch Republic? Baroque Tragedies and Ambiguities Concerning Dominium and Torture 43 Frans-Willem Korsten 2 Grotius among the Dagonists: Joost van den Vondel's Samson, of Heilige Wraeck, Revenge and the Ius Gentium 75 Russ Leo 3 Performing the Medieval Past: Vondel's Gysbreght van Aemstel (1637) 103 Freya Sierhuis part 2 Religion 4 Political Martyrdom at the English College in Rome 135 Howard B. Norland 5 Historical Tragedy and the End of Christian Humanism: Nicolaus Vernulaeus (1583-1649) 152 James A. Parente, Jr. 6 The Baroque Tragedy of the Roman Jesuits: Flavia and Beyond 182 Blair Hoxby vi contents part 3 Ethics 7 Mortal Knowledge: Akrasia in English Renaissance Tragedy 221 Emily Vasiliauskas 8 A fabulis ad veritatem: Latin Tragedy, Truth and Education in Early Modern England 239 Sarah Knight 9 The Political Theater and Theatrical Politics of Andrea Giacinto Cicognini: Il Don Gastone di Moncada (1641) 260 Tatiana Korneeva 10 French Tragedy during the Seventeenth Century: From Cruelty on a Scaffold to Poetic Distance on Stage 294 Christian Biet part 4 Mobility 11 German Trauerspiel and Its International Nexus: On the Migration of Poetic Forms 319 Joel B. Lande 12 The Politics of Mobility: Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, Jan Vos's Aran en Titus and the Poetics of Empire 344 Helmer Helmers 13 French Classicism in Jesuit Theater Poetics of the Eighteenth Century 373 Nienke Tjoelker 14 Scenario of Terror: Royal Violence and the Origins of Russian Tragic Drama 398 Kirill Ospovat Index 429

2008

Such tremendous effects as the performance of Jacob Bidermann's Cenodoxus had in Munich in 1609 will hardly have been an everyday outcome of the staging of an early modern Latin play. 1 It had already been successful at its first performance in the small hall of the Jesuit College at Augsburg on 3 July 1602. On that occasion it was so well received that it had to be repeated on the following day. But Augsburg paled into insignificance beside Munich, if we can believe the report made of it decades later. The hall was packed with a huge audience. At the beginning of the play the audience laughed at the comic scenes, but as the play progressed they realised the enormity of the sins portrayed and the atrocity of Hell that might well be awaiting themselves too. Fourteen members of the audience immediately went into retreat to perform the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, and the actor who played the part of the protagonist Cenodoxus entered the Societas Jesu and nearly became a saint. 2 And many performances of the play were to follow. 3

At long last, a scholar of medieval drama has written a book about The Idea of the Theater in Latin Christian Thought: that is, about changing understandings of ancient theatrical practices, and their theoretical appropriations. Donalee Dox focuses on what the theatre we call "classical" meant to medieval intellectuals over a thousand-year period, and how these meanings are reflective of larger trends--especially the deliberate construction of a Christian world-view and cultural program in the decades after the Council of Nicea, the cataloguing and codification of learning from Isidore to Charlemagne, the canonization of the liturgy in the centuries of monastic reform, the embrace of ancient models brought about by the new urbanity of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the impact of Aristotle's Poetics and its scholastic interpretation in the fourteenth. In other words, this is an intellectual history of a concept, not an attempt to reconstruct the performance conditions of either the ancient world or the Middle Ages.

Plumas, 2024

In the Middle Ages, the spaces of oc and oïl cultures shared the form of the religious theater known as the Mysteries. In this article, we will first discuss from a global point of view common points and differences between the Mysteries of Oc and the English Mysteries, before focusing on a comparative study: the respective staging in these two cultural areas of the resurrection of Lazarus. We can observe that the structural organization of the English “play” starts from biblical fact (first part) towards a speech by Lazarus (absent from the New Testament) with a poetic-lyrical dimension with a very limited homiletic aim. The structural organization of the Rouergate play (Oc mystery) starts from an invented dialogue or from a non-biblical tradition with a clearly apologetic dimension to move towards more biblical fact with the coming of Christ. Both texts use quotations or concrete biblical allusions but only the Occitan text deviates from the source in a properly dialogued and staged part. Finally, we will extend this comparison of Occitan and English medieval theaters with a theme common to both literatures and whose textual structure, without belonging to categories that could imply settings of a minimum complexity as is the case with mysteries, could perfectly have been “played” in a two-part interpretation : the astonishing Dispute between the Virgin and the Cross.

This series offers comprehensive, newly written surveys of key periods and movements and certain major authors in English literary culture and history. Extensive volumes provide new perspectives and positions on contexts and on canonical and postcanonical texts, orientating the beginning student in new fields of study and providing the experienced undergraduate and new graduate with current and new directions, as pioneered and developed by leading scholars in the field.

Shakespeare Quarterly, 2012

university of toronto quarterly, 2005

This study focuses on the role of the Chambers of Rhetoric and their plays in religious, orthodox or dissident, propaganda. These literary guilds were widespread by the end of the fifteenth century and contributed greatly to religious and secular urban culture. They ...

Renaissance Quarterly, 2011