Religion and Latin Drama in the Early Modern Low Countries
Jan Bloemendal
This essay 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 explore 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 the Low
Countries, was that started by Martin Luther (1493-1546) in 1517,
when he published his ninety-five theses and nailed them to the
doorposts of the chapel in Wittenberg, but there were also several
other important religious reform movements active in the region,
such the Anabaptists, the Millenniarists, Johannes Hus and the
Antwerp ‘House of Love’. Just as influential for the growth of
regional theology and neo-Latin drama were those movements which
remained firmly rooted within the Roman Catholic Church, such as
the devotio moderna found throughout the northern Netherlands and
parts of Germany in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the
new strands of thought arising from the Counter-Reformation,
devised in reaction to the Protestant reforms, in the earlier
seventeenth century.[footnoteRef:1] [1: On the devotio moderna,
see, e.g., R.R. Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with
Reformation and Humanism (Leiden: Brill, 1968); Hein Blommestijn,
Charles Caspers and Rijcklof Hofman (eds.), Spirituality Renewed:
Studies on Significant Representatives of the Modern Devotion
(Leuven: Peeters, 2003); John Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of
the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later
Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2008); Elias H. Füllenbach, ‘Devotio Moderna (I. Christianity)’, in
Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, vol. 6, cols. 716-17;
Pierre Debongnie, ‘Dévotion moderne’, in Dictionnaire de
spiritualité (Paris: Beauchesne, 1957), vol. 3, cols. 727-47.]
Intertwined with all of these religious movements was the
educational and intellectual current of humanism. The most famous
humanist from the Low Countries, the theologian Desiderius Erasmus
of Rotterdam (1466-1536), was one of the foremost critics of the
Catholic Church and its representatives — we might think of how he
mocks monks, priests and prelates in his Praise of Folly (first
printed in 1511) — who wanted to change the Church but not to leave
it. Erasmus also influentially linked his educational programme, as
exemplified by works like the De Ratione Studii [On a System of
Study; 1511] and De Pueris Instituendis [On the Upbringing of Boys;
1529] to this ideal of religious reform. Ultimately, for many of
those thinkers preoccupied both with theology and education, the
religious reformation movements and biblical humanism met in the
motto ad fontes: ‘back to the [written] sources’ of classical
civilization as well as to the ‘fount’ of Christianity, the Bible,
which reformers famously argued should be readby educated people
and not only by the clergy. In his Paraclesis ad lectorem pium
[Preface to the devout reader; 1516], one of the prefaces to his
edition and translation of the Bible, to cite just one important
example, Erasmus argued for making the Bible available to all
nations and to all people, including to laymen and
women:[footnoteRef:2] [2: See Paraclesis ad lectorem pium, ed. by
Charles Béné, in Erasmi Opera omnia, vol. 5:7, 290 (ll. 90-3).
]
Optarim vt omnes mulierculae legant euangelium, legant Paulinas
epistolas. Atque vtinam haec in omnes omnium linguas essent
transfusa, vt non solum a Scothis et Hybernis, sed a Turcis quoque
et Saracenis legi cognoscique possint.
[I wished that all women would read the Gospel and the letters
of Paul. I also wished that they would be translated into all
languages of all people, so that not only the Scots and the
Spaniards, but also the Turks and the Saracens could read and
understand them].
Erasmus’ biblical humanism, as well as his classical textual
interests, would have a marked impact on the development of
neo-Latin drama in the Netherlands, as we shall see.
Following these academic and theological upheavals expanding
throughout the sixteenth century in the wake of the reformation,
however, in the seventeenth century, life in the Netherlands had
become somewhat more settled. Out of religious, economic and
political motives the Low Countries had revolted against Habsburg
dominion, embodied in the Ghent-born Emperor Charles V (1500-1555)
and his son Philip II (1527-1598), in the so-called ‘Dutch Revolt’
or the ‘Eighty Years’ War’ (1568-1648). The Southern provinces
(which corresponded more or less to modern-day Belgium) had been
re-conquered by the Roman Catholic Habsburgs, who by then resided
in Spain. In 1581, the Northern and Southern Provinces had been
divided when the Northern portion (which approximated the area
covered by the present-day Netherlands) declared itself the
independent Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. At the
beginning of the seventeenth century, the Southern provinces were
re-catholicized, whereas the Republic had become principally
Protestant in a process of confessionalization. The two main
sixteenth-century changes we have described — the
economically-driven need to educate the new urban elites, and the
religious developments which issued from the Reformation — met in
Latin drama, a medium often written by humanists to educate
students in Latin, morality and Christianity, which therefore had a
religious impact. In the Low Countries, we see the division between
‘North’ and ‘South’, and the confessionalization connected with
that separation, clearly mirrored in contemporary Latin plays in
particularly striking ways. In the Southern provinces, drama
produced by the Catholic religious orders, and especially by the
Society of Jesus, prevailed, while in the North Protestant drama
dominated. To explore the role of religion and theology in
neo-Latin drama in the Low Countries in greater depth, I will now
turn to some important examples of plays by Catholic, Lutheran and
Calvinist dramatists, which should serve as evidence of various
trends and tendencies within the region across the later sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries.[footnoteRef:3] [3: A recent
overview of neo-Latin drama from the Low Countries may be found in
Jan Bloemendal, ‘Neo-Latin Drama in the Low Countries’, in Jan
Bloemendal and Howard B. Norland (eds.), Neo-Latin Drama and
Theatre in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 293-364.]
Religion, Theology and Drama
In its relation to dramatic expression, the complex and
wide-ranging concept of religion needs some careful definition;
religion here is taken to include people’s beliefs on the one hand,
and their practice on the other, which are both reflected in the
neo-Latin plays of the period. . Belief often stems from how an
individual might answer questions such as ‘who is God?’; ‘what is
the relationship between God and humankind?’; ‘what is a person’s
role in the universe?’; ‘what role should religion play in one’s
life?’, and so on, but such individually determined answers and
convictions might not necessarily coincide with the official
doctrines of the Church, as was also the case in some forms of late
medieval lay piety. Practice can be characterised as whatever a
person does in everyday life that might have a religious motivation
or underpinning: depending on one’s affiliation, this might include
attending Catholic mass or Protestant service, praying, making the
sign of the cross, reading the Bible, and the like.
Despite its specific academic remit, theology is of course
intimately associated with religion. We might characterise here as
a broadly scientific way of looking at religion,[footnoteRef:4]
which, even if we limit it solely to Christianity, is also
multifarious, and perhaps the most influential form it takes in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is biblical theology. Early
modern theologians made a considerable intellectual effort to
discern the beliefs and practices of people in the Bible, and were
committed to the two scholarly fields of exegesis [understanding
the narratives of the Bible in their proper historical context] and
hermeneutics [applying one’s understanding of a Biblical story to
daily life]. As a formal academic discipline in the period,
theology also included dogmatics [the treatment of theoretical
truths of faith concerning God and creation that can be distilled
from the Bible] and ethics [rules for everyday life be derived from
Scripture]. That said, theological studies changed substantially
across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and these changes
directly affected the plays produced in educational institutions.
Whereas the main concern of medieval scholastic theology in
previous centuries had been a theoretical understanding of God and
of the relationship between man and God, the humanists aimed at an
internalization of religion and at the practical application of
Christian tenets to daily life. They rejected the weight which
scholastic theologians laid on abstract ideas and universal truths,
as well as the bad Latin the medieval scholars used — at least in
their view.[footnoteRef:5] [4: See David F. Ford, Theology: A Very
Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 16:
‘Theology deals with questions of meaning, truth, beauty, and
practice raised in relation to religions and pursued through a
range of academic disciplines.’] [5: See, for instance, Alister E.
McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004).]
A religious statement needs to come from a particular
theological standpoint, whether consciously held or not, and this
axiom affects a majority of the Latin plays produced on religious
subjects in this period. At the same time, anyone who has studied
neo-Latin drama will be aware of the fact that besides these plays’
status as forms of religious and theological representation, their
authors also wrote them to instruct students in Latin grammar and
vocabulary, to increase their fluency in that language, and, as
importantly, as a theatrical event intended to entertain their
audiences. As evidence for the intellectual and social significance
of Latin drama as well as its vernacular counterparts, we can point
to the fact that early modern European theologians apparently felt
compelled to adopt a stance towards drama throughout the period.
Many opposed or were hostile towards it, because of the theatre’s
general reputation for moral dissoluteness in the period, which
some writers, following Saint Augustine’s anti-theatrical
denunciations, attributed to drama’s roots in pagan religion, while
others based their attacks on their perceptions of acting as a kind
of deceit.[footnoteRef:6] But other theologians, including, perhaps
most influentially, Martin Luther, were more favourably inclined
towards plays because of their didactic potential, especially if
they represented religious stories. Luther famously supported the
dramatization of certain passages from the Bible, especially those
from the Old Testament and the apocrypha: [6: See Donnalee Dox, The
Idea of the Theater in Latin Christian Thought: Augustine to the
Fourteenth Century (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press,
2004).]
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.
[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 is the plot for a gentle,
devout comedy].[footnoteRef:7] [7: Martin Luther: ‘Vorrede auffs
Buch Tobie’, in D. Martin Luther, Die gantze Heilige Schrifft
Deudsch. Wittenberg 1545, ed. by Hans Volz and Heinz Blanke
(Munich: Rogner and Bernhard, 1972), vol. 2, 1731–32, esp. 1731,
quoted by Cora Dietl, ‘Neo-Latin Humanist and Protestant Drama in
Germany’, in Bloemendal and Norland, (eds.), Neo-Latin Drama and
Theatre, 103-83 (148).]
Following in Luther’s footsteps, Protestant Biblical drama
became, as Wolfram Washof has recently argued of Biblical exemplary
characters, ‘a sermon, catechesis and an act of worship or a
service’.[footnoteRef:8] Washof examines religious drama from the
perspective of religious practice, suggesting that the audience’s
experience of the play would resemble listening to a sermon
delivered by a preacher, a lesson taught to the uninitiated, or a
service in which the assembled congregation could learn and (in
terms of their beliefs) absorb the content conveyed by these
situations represented in dramatic form. Seen from this angle, the
protagonists of Biblical plays constitute examples of beliefs and
practices, as well as of right behaviour, and both characters and
plays preach the Gospel as revealed in Old Testament stories and
New Testament parables. Washof lists each lesson an audience may
learn from each story, but in my opinion this approach does not
accurately reflect the impact either of biblical stories or of
theatrical performance, since it reduces both to a single
dimension. I would argue instead that a character in a play based
on the Bible can fulfil several functions at the same time: to take
one particularly influential Renaissance example, the prodigal son
(Luke 15:11-32), for example, may symbolize both the Gentiles who
finally found God and the sinful and penitent Christian. The many
interpretations this particular parable permitted, and the
possibilities of deploying it in narratives of licentiousness and
repentance, as well as the facts that it was recounted by Jesus
himself and that contemporary audiences were very familiar with the
story, made the figure of the prodigal son especially important for
neo-Latin and other early modern dramatists.[footnoteRef:9] [8:
Wolfram Washof, Die Bibel auf der Bühne: Exempelfiguren und
protestantische Theologie im lateinischen und deutschen Bibeldrama
der Reformationszeit (Münster: Rhema, 2007), 55.] [9: See, for
instance, Richard Helgerson, The Elizabethan Prodigals (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1976), and Joannes F.M. Kat, De
verloren zoon als letterkundig motief (Amsterdam: Babeliowsky,
1952).]
In most cases of sacred drama, the authors adhere to the
Biblical narrative. As Gerardus Johannes Vossius remarked in 1647
in his Poeticae institutiones, summarizing ideas about Biblical
drama: ‘As to sacred arguments I add in particular that what Holy
Scripture says should be said here; what is contrary to it may not
be said, what Scripture neither says nor denies should be said with
moderation, that is, only what is probable should be set
forth’.[footnoteRef:10] But these rules were not always observed
during the period. The Flanders schoolmaster Petrus Papaeus, for
example, chose the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 29-37)
as the subject for his Samarites (1539), and adapted the story by
conflating it with that of the prodigal son, more or less
identifying the ‘man who fell among thieves’ with the son. The
first three acts represent this man’s vice-ridden life; thieves,
parasites and lovers are depicted amidst Terentian scenery and
given Terentian names. The young man, called Aegio, leaves his
adopted father Megadorus; the devil Leno [‘Brothel-keeper’] seduces
him with the help of the parasite Gula [‘Gluttony’] and the slave
Hedylogus [‘Sweet-speaker’] loves the girl Sarcophilia
[‘Loving-of-Flesh’] who lives in Jericho. This meretrix
[‘prostitute’], they tell him, is already fatally in love with him.
On his journey he is robbed by the thieves Cupido, Bacchus and
Death, and then helped by the Samaritan. [10: Vossius, Poeticarum
Institutionum libri tres, 1. 5. 33: ‘Illud particulatim de sacro
addam argumento, in hoc esse dicenda quae sacra dicit Scriptura;
quae repugnant non dicenda; quae nec dicit nec negat Scriptura
sobrie dicenda, nempe solum promenda quae sunt verisimilia’; see
Vossius, Poeticarum Institutionum libri tres / Institutes of
Poetics in Three Books, ed. by Jan Bloemendal (Leiden: Brill,
2010), 240-41.]
The play is completely allegorical in terms of its main story
too: Aegio represents mankind, his master Eubulus [‘Good Advice’]
reason, Megadorus God, and the oil the Samaritan uses for Aegio
represents the Holy Spirit’s grace. The story is interpreted in the
sense of early Christianity, equating the Samaritan with Christ and
with the Church; the Samaritan handing over Aegio to the innkeeper
to take care of him stands for Christ handing over the Church to
St. Peter and his heirs.[footnoteRef:11] Thus, the story is
represented on several levels: literally, the story is told and
shown; morally, it is a warning against a life of sin and an
exhortation to do good; and anagogically, it is intended as a
Catholic response to Gnapheus’ Acolastus mirroring the act of
salvation, and justifying and glorifying the power of the Church.
[11: Cf. Bloemendal, ‘Neo-Latin Drama in the Low Countries’, 320-1;
see also Parente, Religious Drama, 73.]
Two Roman Catholic Authors from the Northern Netherlands:
Georgius Macropedius and Cornelius Laurimanus
The Dutch Roman Catholic priest, school rector and playwright
Georgius Macropedius (Joris van Lanckvelt, 1487-1558) was educated,
as Erasmus had been, by the Brethren of the Common Life, who
adhered to the devotio moderna.[footnoteRef:12] He worked as a
teacher himself and a rector at schools run by the Brethren in
’s-Hertogenbosch, Liège and Utrecht, and started writing plays for
performance by his pupils in the first decade of the sixteenth
century. He wrote twelve pieces, of which six were fabulae sacrae
[Biblical plays]: Adamus (1552); Iosephus (1544); Asotus
evangelicus (1537); Hypomone (1553); and Iesus scholasticus (1556).
Macropedius therefore uses subjects both from the Old and New
Testaments, namely the stories of Adam and Eve (Genesis 1-4, also
discussed below); Joseph in Egypt (Genesis 37-50); the prodigal son
(Luke 15:11-32); the ‘Patience’ or ‘Endurance’ [ὑπομονή] of the
beginning of the First Letter of James; the twelve-year-old Jesus
teaching in the temple (Luke 2:41-52); and the rich man and Lazarus
(Luke 16: 19-31). Besides his fabulae sacrae, five of Macropedius’
plays were adaptations of farcical plots that already existed in
vernacular form, and another, Hecastus, is an allegorical play on
the theme of ‘Everyman’. Hecastus (1539), like Everyman, addresses
the question of what man’s consolation is at the hour of his death,
which turned out to be dangerous, because this was also the theme
at the rhetoricians’ festival and theatre contest in Ghent in 1535,
where some of the plays performed tended to present heterodox
responses to that question, suggesting ‘grace’ or ‘God’s mercy’
instead of ‘Church’, ‘confession’, ‘contrition’ or ‘good deeds’.
The contest was the cause of repressive governmental measures.
Macropedius himself, too, seems to have roused suspicions about his
orthodoxy, and in 1552 he published a new, uncontroversial version
of his play.[footnoteRef:13] [12: For further recent discussion of
Macropedius and his work, see Henk Giebels and Frans Slits,
Georgius Macropedius 1487-1558: Leven en werk van een Brabantse
humanist (Tilburg: Stichting Zuidelijk Historisch Contact Tilburg,
2005); Jan Bloemendal (ed.), The Latin Playwright Georgius
Macropedius (1487-1558) in European Contexts, special issue of
European Medieval Drama 13 (2009); Guillaume van Gemert,
‘Macropedius’, in Wilhelm Kühlmann, Jan-Dirk Müller, Michael
Schilling, Johann Anselm Steiger and Friedrich Vollhardt (eds.),
Frühe Neuzeit in Deutschland 1520-1620: Literaturwissenschaftliches
Verfasserlexikon, Vol. 4 (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2015),
cols. 238-52.] [13: See Frank Leys, ‘Macropedius [...] leves et
facetas fecit olim fabulas: Een opmerkelijke evolutie in de
toneelstukken van Georgius Macropedius’ in Handelingen der
Koninklijke Zuldnederlandse Kaatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde
en Geschiedenis, 40 (1986), 87-96; and Leys, ‘L’“Hecastus”de
Macropedius et le “Landjuweel” de Gand (1539)’, Humanistica
Lovaniensia 37 (1988), 267-68.]
To explore Macropedius’ attitude towards religion and drama, we
will discuss one of his last plays, Adamus (1552).[footnoteRef:14]
In this fabula sacra, Macropedius portrays the first human couple
Adam and Eve on a journey through time and Biblical history leading
up to the Annunciation and Mary’s visit to her cousin Elisabeth,
described in Luke 1: 39, as they await Christ’s birth. They do not
experience the birth of Christ himself, since Christ is the ‘new
Adam’ and it seems that for Macropedius the old and the new Adam
cannot be represented together. We might initially see this as an
example of a general cultural reticence about portraying Christ,
but Macropedius did not abstain from making him the protagonist of
his later play Iesus scholasticus. The first couple of mankind are
guided by a guardian angel to encounter Abraham and Isaac, Moses
and Aaron, and King David, among other figures. Of some individuals
they meet, such as Abraham, Moses and David, it is explicitly said:
‘He refers to the true Christ, but he himself is not the Christ’
[Hic veri typum Christi geret, non Christus ipse verus est; ll.
1448-49].[footnoteRef:15] This plot device means that Adam and Eve
have to continue their journey after each visit, in their quest for
the Christ, and Macropedius therefore stresses the typological
character of these Old Testament figures, making Eve, for instance,
ask Adam when they visit the young pastor David: ‘Please explain
how David can be a type of Christ. I do not know how this little
boy can be a figure of Christ’ [Sed David ut Christi typum gerat,
explica. Qui puer adhuc Christum figuret, nescio; ll. 1460-61].
Moreover, Macropedius can also teach his pupils some highlights of
Biblical history, including the Ten Commandments, the annunciation,
and the hymns sung by Mary and Elisabeth. In its structure, Adamus
is an episodic drama, in which teaching — especially of religious
matters — prevails over dramatic action, although there is some
dramatic tension because the audience’s curiosity is provoked by
who Adam and Eve will meet next and what lesson might thereby be
learned. [14: On Adamus, see also Giebels and Slits, Georgius
Macropedius, 266-74; Frans-Willem Korsten, ‘“But did they not, with
it, burn the excrements as well?”: Macropedius’s Experimental
Plays, or Humanism as Avant-garde’, in Bloemendal (ed.), Georgius
Macropedius, 117-136.] [15: Macropedius, Adamus, ed. by Frans P. T.
Slits; CD-ROM included with Henk Giebels and Frans Slits, Georgius
Macropedius (1487-1558): Leven en werk van een Brabantse humanist
(Tilburg: Stichting Zuidelijk Historisch Contact, 2005).]
Similar instruction had been given by Macropedius in his earlier
play Iosephus (1544). At the end of the play, Joseph marries
Asenath, the daughter of Potiphar and his wife. In earlier scenes,
Joseph had acted as a kind of catechist, teaching Asenath the
elementary tenets of Christian faith such as phrases from the
Symbolum [‘Creed’] and the doctrine of the Holy Trinity (we see
this, for instance, in I. iv). The anachronism of introducing
Christian elements into pre-Christian, Old Testament contexts seems
not to have bothered the rector scholae; for him, it was apparently
more important to show that Catholic Christianity had already won
over Potiphar’s family. Ethics also play a role in this Biblical
play: Asenath’s parents Potiphar and Aegla, for example, repent and
acknowledge in a kind of tragic anagnorisis that they deserve to be
punished and do penance, and so Macropedius links beliefs about
Christian behaviour and remorse with practices of ‘doing’ penance.
Exegesis and hermeneutics also play an important part, as
Macropedius interprets Joseph as a prefiguration of Christ, and
several times in his play he adds as a kind of epithet the words
‘Saviour of the World’ [in Greek, ‘Σωτῆρ κόσμου’] to the name of
Joseph, in the Christian tradition of typological exegesis of the
Old Testament.[footnoteRef:16] Despite his credentials as a
humanist pedagogue with an interest in biblical theology,
Macropedius also stands in the tradition of medieval exegesis,
based on the fourfold interpretation of biblical texts: sensus
literalis [‘literal sense’], sensus allegoricus [‘allegorical
sense’], sensus moralis [‘moral sense’] and sensus anagogicus
[‘anagogical sense’, i.e. related either to the history of the
Church or to the end of the world].[footnoteRef:17] In Josephus,
Macropedius presents parts of the literal story, offers an
allegorical interpretation of some of its elements (such as
characterising Joseph as a prefiguration of Christ), a moral one
(as in the repentance of Potiphar and his wife), and in the
anagogical sense Aegla and Asenath represent Judaism and
Christianity. [16: This is the rendering of the Egyptian name of
Joseph, Safnath-Pineach. On the Joseph story in drama, see Jean
Lebeau, Salvator mundi: L’ ‘exemple’ de Joseph dan le théâtre
allemand au xvie siècle, 2 vols. (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1997) and
Ruprecht Wimmer, Jesuitentheater: Didaktik und Fest: Das Exemplum
des ägyptischen Joseph auf den deutschen Bühnen der Gesellschaft
Jesu (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1982).] [17:
‘Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, / Moralis quid agas,
quo tendas [quid speres] anagogia’ [‘The literal teaches what has
happened, the allegory shows what you should believe, the moral
meaning teaches what you should do, the anagogy where you should
aim [or ‘what you should hope for’]’]; see Rotulus pugillaris,
Chapter 1 (De introductoriis scientiae theologicae), ed. P. A Walz,
O.P., Angelicum 6 (1929), 256. Cf. Henri de Lubac, S.J., Exégèse
médiévale: Les quatre sens de l'Ecriture 4 vols. (Paris: Aubier,
1959-1964); and McGrath, Intellectual Origins, 148-50.]
Part of the instruction offered by the play is found in the song
by a chorus of all performers at the end of the second act, who
sing of the creation in the form of a Sapphic ode (ll.
306-339):
CHORUS.
Per familiam praesentem.
Turbidi plastes Deus unus orbis
Condidit lucem tenebris fugatis,
Has volens noctem vocitari, et illam
Esse diurnam.
Inter effusas simul orbis undas
Condidit caelum, ut στερέωμα firmum
Sive discrimen sine mixtione
Esset utrisque.
Colligens undas locum in unum ab imo
Aridam iussit superare, ut herbas
Germinet fructusque homini creando, et
Omni animanti.
Solis et lunae rutilas lucernas
Fecit, ut Phoebus niteat diei,
Atque cum stellis vaga luna nocti
Luceat atrae.
Duxit ex lymphis volucres, et omne
Quicquid in ponto vegetatur, et quod
Reptat aut serpit, benedixit atque
Crescere iussit.
Duxit e terra pecudes, ferasque
Bestias multae variaeque formae.
Iussit et fetu decorare terram
Multiplicato.
Finxit e limo rubicundo Adamum,
Praeditum mente et ratione fultum,
Quo Dei formae similis praeesset
Omnibus unus.
Gratias ergo meritas agamus
Omnium plastae, qui ut ametur, ultro
Propter humani generis salutem
Cuncta creavit.
Repetitio ad singulos quaternarios:
Propter humani generis salutem
Cuncta creavit
[Chorus sung by the actors on stage.
The Sculptor of the world without form, the one God, dispelled
darkness and created light. He wanted darkness to be called night,
and light day.
In the middle of the vast waters of the world he also created
heaven, to be a solid ‘firmament’, that is, a complete separation
between both waters.
He gathered the waters of the world unto one place and thus let
the dry land appear, to bring forth grass and fruits for man that
would be created and for every living creature.
He created the reddish lights of sun and moon, that Phoebus
Apollo would shine in the daytime, and the erring moon, together
with the star, in the black night.
From water he made the birds and everything that swarms in the
sea, and he blessed everything that is creeping or prowling,
ordering it to be fruitful.
From earth he made cattle and wild animals of every form. He
ordered them to adorn the earth by multiplying.
From red clay he formed Adam, endowed with intelligence and
supported by reason, in order to be the only to have dominion over
everything, since he was in God’s image.
Let us therefore rightly thank him who formed everything who in
order to be loved of his own accord created everything for the
salvation [i.e. benefit] of the human race.
Refrain:
For the salvation [i.e. benefit] of the human race he created
everything.]
In this passage, we see that Macropedius rephrases the Biblical
story of the creation of the world. Whereas the Vulgate uses the
terms creare [‘to create’] and creator, the humanist speaks of
plastes, from the Greek πλασσώ [‘to form’, ‘to mould’, or ‘to
sculpt’], which of course is an interpretation based on the concept
of creatio ex nihilo [‘creation from nothing’] to mould existing
chaotic entities. Diverging from Biblical phrasing, he uses
classical formulations such as Phoebus for the sun. He describes
Man (in the person of Adam), following contemporary humanistic
interpretation, as praeditum mente et ratione fultum [‘gifted with
brains and reason’]. He also omits Biblical phrases such as et
vidit Deus quod esset bonum [‘and God saw that it was good’].
Macropedius does not straightforwardly tell the story, but
formulates it according to a particular interpretation; the
creation of the world is presented as an act for the benefit and
salvation of mankind, who can (he implies) control this world with
his mind and reason. In this respect, Macropedius is unlike most
other contemporary dramatists who tend to incorporate such explicit
interpretations within a preface, a prologue or an epilogue. There
is one other remarkable exception, as Peter Macardle has pointed
out: the allegory of the prodigal son in Gnapheus’ Acolastus (1529)
pervades the entire work in an intricate play between the sensus
literalis and the sensus allegoricus.[footnoteRef:18] [18: See
Peter G. Macardle, The Allegory of Acolastus. Biblical Allegoresis
and its Literary Reflex in Gnapheus’s Acolastus (1529) (Durham:
Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2007).]
If we look at Macropedius’ plays, we can ask ourselves how
‘Catholic’ they are, and in relation to their theological content,
especially, they keep pace with medieval allegorical interpretation
and what we might think of as ‘mainstream’ Roman-Catholic
dogmatics. However, as well as discussing religious and biblical
matters in the form of a classical comedy in classical language,
Macropedius’ theology could also be seen as rather loose. His
Hecastus, for example, particularly, contains ideas that could be
considered Protestant about the notion of salvation through grace.
For this reason, Macropedius is representative of Dutch humanist
playwrights of the earlier sixteenth century, writing during a time
of confessional flux when religious and theological issues were not
yet settled, so that people could more easily mix ‘old’ and ‘new’
ideas. The instruction in religious matters offered by Macropedius’
Latin plays is nonetheless quite straightforward.
Cornelius Laurimanus (ca. 1530-1573), one of the next generation
of Dutch neo-Latin playwrights,acted similarly. Continuing the
established tradition of pedagogue-dramatists, Laurimanus was
Macropedius’ successor as rector scholae in Utrecht, and wrote
three plays: Esthera regina (1560), Miles Christianus (The
Christian Soldier; 1562) and Exodus, sive transitus Maris Rubri
(Exodus, or the Crossing of the Red Sea; 1562). He wished Exodus to
be interpreted anagogically and typologically.[footnoteRef:19]
Therefore in the play, the Israelites represent the Church which is
constantly assaulted by Pharaoh, who stands, in this case, for the
diabolical personification of Lutheran heresies (Exodus, 61r): [19:
See Jan Bloemendal, ‘Cornelius Laurimanus als Dramatiker – Theater
und Theologie gegen Ketzereien’, in Reinhold F. Glei and Robert
Seidel (eds.), Das lateinische Drama der Frühen Neuzeit:
Exemplarische Einsichten in Praxis und Theorie (Tübingen: Niemeyer,
2008), 101-32.]
In Israelitis statuite ecclesiam
Dei, ut quidem erat, quam nunquam cessat persequi
Communis omnium hostis diabolus. Hanc premit,
Huic insidiatur, hanc studet in tyrannidem
Suam corripere, hanc ipse pernox circuit
Tanquam leo rugiens, vt quem ex hac devoret
[...] Videmus vel hodie
Quantis et ipsa haereticorum fallacijs
Quantis iactetur usque tempestatibus,
Qua peccatorum servitute non ea
Prematur, in quem denique orbis angulum
Propulsa sit.
[...]
Hic principes monentur reges ac duces
Vt orthodoxam ecclesiam audiant, ferant
Verbi ministros et bene monitis obtemperent.
[You should see in the Israelites the Church of God, as it was.
The enemy of all, the Devil, constantly persecutes it. He
suppresses it, waylays it, tries to pull it into his tyranny and
wanders around at night as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may
devour [a reference to 1 Peter 5: 8] [...] Even today we see how
many dissembling heresies swing the Church back and forth on the
waves, how each slavery of sins suppresses it, and to what a small
angle of the word it is expelled. [...] Here princes, kings and
leaders are summoned to listen to the orthodox Church and to endure
the servants of the Word of God and obey their beneficial
warnings.]
But within the play Pharaoh also represents other contemporary
enemies of the Church, in this case, the Muslims, a figuration
which is quite extraordinary in neo-Latin drama issuing from this
region in the period (Exodus, 62r):[footnoteRef:20] [20: To the
best of my knowledge, no research into the representation of either
the Islamic world or the Ottoman empire in neo-Latin drama from the
Netherlands has been done. For recent work on Islam and Erasmus,
see, e.g., Erika Rummel, The Erasmus Reader (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1990), 315-32. On Latin writing and the Islamic
world more broadly, see, for instance, Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman
Empire and early modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002); Margaret Meserve, Empires of Islam in Renaissance
Historical Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008);
and Dag Nikolaus Hasse, ‘Contacts with the Arab World’, in Sarah
Knight and Stefan Tilg (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 279-93.]
[...] Ah, fili, neutiquam
Sodes transgrediaris vetustos terminos,
Quos posuerunt tibi patres tui. Quod si
Factum fuisset, non iam sentiremus in
Nostros fines propagatum Mohemeticum
Regnum, aut late adeo saeviret noster Pharo,
Nec huc malorum perventum fuisset. Hoc
Notant plagae decem.
[[...] Oh, Son, please do not transgress the old borders that
your fathers have set for you. For if this rule would have been
obeyed, we would not have witnessed the Muslim empire spread across
our territory, our Pharaoh would not have raged so widely and we
would not have come into so much mischief. This is the meaning of
the ten plagues.]
Whereas Macropedius limited himself to general tenets of
Christian faith and remained quite moderate in his ideological
content, Laurimanus’ plays are characterised by their polemic,
arising from his own struggle to preserve his native town Utrecht
as Roman Catholic. His efforts were in vain, however, because in
1580 Utrecht officially switched to Protestantism, and so his drama
can be viewed as representative of the process of
confessionalization, showing how entrenched positions in religious
matters had become within the period. In this respect, especially
compared with the theological fluidity we have observed in
Macropedius’ writing, the work of Laurimanus is typical of a new
generation of playwrights working in an age when confessions had
crystallized and were more concertedly under attack. As a
consequence, religious and theological didacticism is more implicit
within the plays of Laurimanus themselves, but becomes more
explicit and polemical in the explanatory parts, particularly the
perorations to his plays Cumulatively, as well, his choice of
subject matter – the Old Testament stories and the narrative of the
Christian Soldier – also reveal his Catholic background.
A Protestant Playwright in the North: Guilielmus Gnapheus
On the other side of the Reformation confessional divide, a
schoolmaster from The Hague, Guilielmus Gnapheus (Willem de Volder;
1493-1568) who started to write school plays in the third decade of
the sixteenth century, was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church
in his native town because of his reformed ideas.[footnoteRef:21]
He went into exile, travelled to Poland, and became rector of the
Latin school in Elbing in the north of that country, but was
persecuted there too, eventually departing for Königsbergen where
he was accused by Lutheran colleagues not only of heresy but also
of neglecting his duties. In the trial over the latter controversy,
his dramas Acolastus (1529), Morosophus (The Foolish Wise Person;
1541), and Hypocrisis (Hypocrisy; 1544) were used as
‘evidence’.[footnoteRef:22] His most famous and influential play
was the first one he wrote, Acolastus [from ἀκόλαστος, ‘lawless’,
or ‘uncontrolled’], which is based on the parable of the prodigal
son told in Luke 15: 11-32.[footnoteRef:23] The plot is as follows:
Philautus [‘Self-Love’] admonishes his friend Acolastus
[‘Uncontrolled’], the prodigal, to leave his father Pelargus. The
prodigal does so, but is robbed of his belonging by two scoundrels,
Pamphagus [‘All-eating’] and Pantolabus [‘All-snatching’]. Then the
innkeeper Sannio and the prostitute Lais cheat him, he loses the
rest of his money by gambling, and in his penniless state he is
forced to work for the farmer Chremes. Meanwhile, Eubulus
[‘Good-advice’] advices the father Pelargus to forgive his son.
Acolastus, desperately returns to his father, convinced that he
will be accepted again, and he is heartily
welcomed.[footnoteRef:24] The play adheres closely to the Biblical
story, but expands Luke 15: 13, particularly (‘[he] wasted his
substance with riotous living’). In the scenes in which this life
in lust and love is depicted, Gnapheus creates a Terentian
atmosphere in which prostitutes and rogues, inn-keepers and
criminals are presented as they act in Roman comedies, but unlike
the plots of Terence’s plays, he allows the prodigal a moment of
anagnorisis when he discovers the world’s deceptiveness and his own
depravity, leading to repentance and his own conversion. It is a
play written by a Protestant, but is it also a Protestant
play?[footnoteRef:25] In other words: is it ‘Protestant’ in terms
of beliefs and practices? [21: See Verena Demoed, ‘Wie van gevaar
houdt, moet dat met de dood bekopen’: De opiniërende strategieën
van Gulielmus Gnapheus (1493-1568) (PhD thesis, Amsterdam, 2011);
and Bloemendal, ‘Neo-Latin Drama in the Low Countries’, 305-6.]
[22: See Demoed, ‘Theatre in Court: The Heresy Trial against the
Playwright Gnapheus and the Confessionalization of the Lutheran
Church’, in Jan Bloemendal, Peter G. F. Eversmann and Elsa
Strietman (eds.), Drama, Performance and Debate: Theatre and Public
Opinion in the Early Modern Period (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 115-141;
on Morosophus and Hypocrisis see Demoed, ‘Stultitia on Stage:
Gnapheus’ Foolish Scientist and the Praise of Folly of Eramus’, in
Jan Bloemendal and Philip Ford (eds.), Neo-Latin Drama: Forms,
Functions, Receptions (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2008),
165-83; Demoed, ‘The Morality of Hypocrisy: Gnapheus’ Hypocrisis
and the Lutheran Reformation’, in Jan Bloemendal, Arjan van
Dixhoorn and Elsa Strietman (eds.), Literary Cultures and Public
Opinion in the Low Countries, 1450-1650 (Leiden: Brill, 2011),
91-119.] [23: Gnapheus, Acolastus. De filio prodigo comoedia
Acolasti titulo inscripta (Antwerp: Godfriedus Dumaeus, 1529); for
an English version, see Gnapheus, Acolastus: A Latin Play of the
XVIth Century, ed. and trans. by W.E.D. Atkinson (London, ON:
University of Western Ontario, 1964); a modern edition is Gulielmus
Gnapheus, Acolastus, ed. Piet Minderaa (Zwolle: Tjeenk Willink,
1958); see also Macardle, Allegory of Acolastus, and the review by
Jan Bloemendal in Church History and Religious Culture, 89 (2009),
329-334; and Demoed, ‘Wie van gevaar houdt’, 87-114.] [24: Cf.
Bloemendal, ‘Neo-Latin Drama in the Low Countries’, 305.] [25: See
Stephen Wailes, ‘Is Gnapheus’ Acolastus a Lutheran Play?’, in
Francis Gentry et al. (eds.), Semper Idem et Novus: Festschrift for
Frank Banta (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1988), 345-65; Washof, Die Bibel
auf der Bühne, 304-306; James A. Parente, Jr., Religious Drama and
the Humanist Tradition: Christian Theater in Germany and in the
Netherlands 1500-1680 (Leiden: Brill, 1987), 44-5; and Bloemendal,
‘Neo-Latin Drama in the Low Countries’, 305-6.]
Primarily, it is drama, not theology that is presented in
Acolastus, which allows several interpretations at the same time.
If one focuses on the theme of grace in the play, exemplified by
the father who graciously receives his sinful son, it may be
considered a Lutheran play, given that the doctrine of sola gratia
[‘grace alone’] is a shibboleth of Lutheran doctrine. However,
other Protestant movements as well as the Catholic Church were also
not averse to grace, although most of these merely opposed placing
an excessive emphasis on it. There are certainly moments of grace
in the play, as when Eubulus advises the prodigal son’s father,
Pelargus (ll. 194-197):
[...] Dehinc tuas
Sub alas si recurrerit atque supplicem
In gratiam tum admiseris, certe hinc magis
Tibi filium alligaueris, ac dudum fuit.
[[...] If he hurries back to the shelter of your wings and you
then extend your grace [gratia] to him as a suppliant, you will
indeed bind your son to you more tightly than ever, even as he was
a while ago].[footnoteRef:26] [26: Acolastus, trans. Atkinson,
103.]
In this interpretation of the Biblical story, Gnapheus stresses
the grace bestowed on man, mirroring Luther’s emphasis on God’s
grace, and man’s gratefulness for this grace and his obligation to
obey the Lord’s commands.
The play ends with a peroration, probably spoken by the
headmaster (ll. 1293-1301):
In hoc adeo Christus parabolam ipse adhibet,
Vt quam dolemus nos Deo aduersarios
Iraeque nasci filios, tam nos iuuet
Contra, in patris longe optimi quod gratiam
Rediuimus per Spiritus charismata.
Quae si tibi persuasa erunt, per nos satis,
Spectator optime, nihil est, quod amplius
Sperabis a nobis. Frui istis gaudiis
Tibi datur in omnes dies. Plaude et vale.
[Christ himself employed his parable to this end, that the more
we grieve at being in conflict with God and born the children of
wrath, the more we may rejoice at being restored to our Father’s
grace [gratia] through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. If this lesson
has been truly learned, most worthy spectator, we have done all
that can be expected of us. It is granted you to partake of that
bliss forever. Clap your hands and farewell!][footnoteRef:27] [27:
Cf. Acolastus, trans. Atkinson, 203, which I have slightly
adapted.]
The peroration argues that charismata or ‘gifts of the Spirit’ —
the word ‘charisma’ comes from χάρις [‘grace’; cf. 1 Corinthians
12: 8-11] — help people to attain grace, which is not exclusively a
Lutheran tenet, for the contemporary Catholic church also laid
emphasis on charismata and grace. Gnaphaeus’ point was that Luther
laid too much emphasis on grace and on grace being given by God
‘for nothing’.
Atkinson has asked whether Acolastus is an elaboration of the
controversy between Luther and Erasmus on free will and free
choice, recorded in Erasmus’ De libero arbitrio (On free choice;
1524) and Luther’s De servo arbitrio (On bound choice; 1525),
represented by the characters Pelargus and Eubulus respectively
within the play.[footnoteRef:28] Atkinson argues that the prodigal
son made a choice according to what he thought was his own free
will, to lead another life, but was captured by rogues in that life
he chose. Eubulus had advised the father, Pelargus, to bestow grace
upon his son, for Aegrotus non nisi medica manu/ opus habet [‘It is
a physician’s touch that is needed by a sick man’],[footnoteRef:29]
an adaptation of Matthew 9:12: At Iesus audiens ait: “Non est opus
valentibus medico, sed male habentibus” [‘But Jesus, listening,
said: “It is not the healthy who need a physician, but those that
are sick”’]. Eubulus thus expresses the view that the prodigal —
like every man and woman — is sick and needs the help of a doctor,
or, in doctrinal terms, that he is a sinner and needs God’s grace.
[28: Ibid., ‘Introduction’, 51-67. Cf. Erasmus, In evangeliium
Lucae paraphrasis, the paraphrase of the parable of the prodigal
son found in Luke 15: 11-32.] [29: Gnapheus, Acolastus ll.
1191-1192, trans. Atkinson, Acolastus, 195.]
Macardle, in a masterly interpretation, discusses Acolastus in
the tradition of Biblical exegesis. Humanists, although they tended
to oppose medieval, and especially scholastic, theology, often
stuck, as we have previously mentioned, to the fourfold exegesis
proposed by medieval theology, that a story could be interpreted in
a literal, tropological or moral, typological and anagogical sense,
mapping respectively onto the story itself, the lessons to be
learnt from it, its meaning as prefiguration or type of Christ, and
its meaning for the Last Judgment or the Church. Macardle shows
that all these meanings (in the sense of beliefs) are present in
this prodigal play. But whereas other plays confine the exegesis of
the story to the prologue or the epilogue, Acolastus contains such
hidden meanings throughout. One can therefore conclude that
Acolastus, with its stress on grace, is a Lutheran, or, in any
case, Protestant, play; that it is also an Erasmian play, with its
stress on free will; and that it is aligned too with medieval
exegesis and its fourfold interpretation.
However, the play in itself is not polemical. A contemporary of
Gnapheus, the French Roman-Catholic teacher and theologian Gabriel
Prateolus (Gabriel Dupréau, 1511-1588) published in 1554 a
commentary on the play which mainly stresses the Terentian and
Plautine allusions and quotations in it, and was able draw moral
lessons from each scene using quotations from Cicero. Prateolus
only gives a more theological interpretation when explaining the
Peroratio, not without quotations from Ambrose and Augustine. So
just like Macropedius, Gnapheus writing in the first decades of the
sixteenth century, is not overtly polemical in this early play;
although he changed his tone in a later play, Hypocrisis (1544), an
attack on the hypocrisy Gnapheus saw in the Roman Catholic Church.
Acolastus, as we have seen in Macropedius’ work, dates from a time
when theological issues were still up for debate, before actual
confessionalization fixed people’s denominational affiliations more
firmly.
Two Southern Playwrights:
Jacobus Cornelius Lummenaeus a Marca and Nicolaus Vernulaeus
The Southern part of the Netherlands became Catholic again after
the fall of Antwerp in 1585, when it was divided from the Northern
parts which subsequently became the Dutch Republic. This secession
inevitably meant that the playwrights active in the South during
the seventeenth century worked in a very different ideological
context. One example is a Benedictine monk from Ghent, Jacobus
Cornelius Lummenaeus a Marca (ca. 1580-ca. 1628), who wrote the
tragedy Carcer Babylonius (Babylonian Captivity, 1610; reprinted as
Sedecias) on the capture of Jerusalem by the Babylonian King
Nebuchadnezzar, the blinding of the Jewish King Zedekiah and the
killing of his sons.[footnoteRef:30] In intertextual terms, this
play picks up the theme of the magistrate Robert Garnier’s (ca.
1545-1590) French tragedy Les Juifves (The Jews; 1583). Lummenaeus
a Marca’s play has been boldly interpreted by James Parente as a
portrayal of William of Orange, whose dominion should also have
been recaptured by the Habsburg kings.[footnoteRef:31] Whether or
not this is true, his play can easily be viewed as a plea for the
reunification of the Low Countries under Spanish rule, and,
inevitably, for a return to the Roman Catholic faith, and therefore
exemplifies the confessionalization of drama in the Low Countries
during the seventeenth century. [30: On this playwright, see Ron J.
Gruijters, An Eloquent Enigma: The Dramas of Jacobus Cornelius
Lummenaeus a Marca (c. 1580 – c. 1628) and their Contexts (PhD
thesis, Amsterdam, 2010).] [31: Parente, ‘The Paganization of
Biblical Tragedy: The Dramas of Jacob Cornelius Lummenaeus à Marca
(1570-1629)’, Humanistica Lovaniensia, 38 (1989), 209-37; see also
Gruijters, An Eloquent Enigma, 137-69.]
In Carcer Babylonius, the Northern provinces rebel against the
Habsburg dynasty and, as a consequence, against God himself.
Nebuchadnezzar’s exclamation at the beginning of the play shows how
baroque Lummenaeus a Marca’s writing is in its high-pitched affects
and ambiguities. He shows the pagan Babylonian king to be both an
evil character and someone who occasionally expresses the right
views, and also gives us a Jewish king who has sinned against God
(ll. 1-11):
Infida semper Solyma! Non umquam semel
Periura, perduellis! Ingratum caput
O Sedecia! Quo rapit praeceps furor
Vltro ruentem? Sentio, ignescunt fibrae,
Et iam citato pectore eluctans dolor
Vrit medullas, nec satis flammam tego.
Vaeh Sedecia! Testor aeternos Deos,
Et quos Olympus aureo claudit sinu
Et quos tenebrae desides vmbra tegunt,
Improbe peribis, sanguine extinguam tuo
Quae me fatigat pectoris flammam mei.
[Always faithless Jerusalem! You that are never merely once
unreliable and seditious. O hated Zedekiah! Where does pernicious
frenzy drag me, I who am already crashing down of my own accord? I
notice it, my intestines are boiling, and grief struggling out
quickly from my throbbing breast, is burning my bowels, and I
cannot sufficiently hide the flame. Ah, Zedekiah! I take the
eternal gods as witnesses, both those who live in the golden bosom
of Mount Olympus and those who are covered by the crippling
darkness with its shadow: you will perish, villain, and with your
blood I will extinguish the flame in my chest that fatigues
me.]
The Jewish religious rebellion against Jehovah/God is implicitly
interpreted here as the political rebellion of the Dutch against
Spanish dominion. Read thus, the final lines spoken by a prophet
are especially telling (ll. 1168-70):
Heu quam timendum est degere inuisum Deo
Tentare foetam Numinis diri manum!
O sancte I’Houa! iustus est furor tuus.
[Ah! How terrifying it is to live hated by God, and to test the
generous hand of the dire deity! O holy Jehovah! Your raging is
righteous.]
Of course, for the Catholic Lummenaeus a Marca, it is the
Protestants from the Northern provinces who test God’s hand and
will be struck by his hatred. Carcer Babylonius illustrates clearly
how the positions of these neo-Latin dramatists at the end of the
sixteenth century and beginning of the seventeenth had hardened, as
both Protestant and, especially, Catholic authors were writing more
confessionally committed plays, and were, moreover, explicitly
intertwining politics and religion in their work. During the second
half of the sixteenth century, too, related to this ideological
development, we also see a shift in genre from perhaps simpler
comedies on a Terentian model to the increasing dominance of more
complicated tragedies.
A second example of ideologically charged drama is another
tragedy, written by the Louvain professor of rhetoric Nicolaus
Vernulaeus (1583-1649), Gorcomienses sive fidei exilium (The
Priests from Gorcum or Faith Exiled; 1610), in which Vernulaeus
portrays the martyrdom of nineteen priests in the city of Gorcum,
hanged by ‘sea-beggars’ (freedom fighters, but also terrorists) in
1572.[footnoteRef:32] By showing the atrocities committed by
contemporary Protestants, Vernulaeus contributes to the
confessionalization of neo-Latin drama in the region, as his letter
of dedication to Bernard de Montgaillard (confessor to Albert,
Governor General of the Habsburg Netherlands and briefly Archduke
of Austria) and his consort Isabella, makes clear: [32: Nicolaus
Vernulaeus, Gorcomienses, siue fidei exilium. Tragoedia. Exhibita
ludis encoenalibus Louanii Anno M.DC.IX ab Alumnis Collegii
Porcensis (Cologne: Bernardus Gualterus, 1610). On Vernulaeus, see
Parente, Religious Drama, 89-90; Bloemendal, ‘Neo-Latin Drama in
the Low Countries’, 349-50; 363-4.]
The country of the Netherlands saw them [i.e. the martyrs] in
its own theatre when it made itself an enemy, shocked by the fatal
uprise; but it saw them as people it admired because they were
stronger than tyranny and fate, and mourned bitterly because they
were killed as innocents
[Vidit illos in theatro suo Belgica, cum fatali concussa motu se
sibi formaret hostem, sed vidit, quos et admiraretur tyrannide
fortunaque maiores et innocentes deploraret
ademptos].[footnoteRef:33] [33: Vernulaeus, Gorcomienses, 4.]
Among the characters in this historical drama are the allegories
‘Catholic Faith’ [Fides catholica] and ‘Inquisition of Heresies’
[Inquisitio haeretica]. The choruses are sung by Catholic
Hollanders going into exile, Heretics and Soldiers of Gorcum
respectively, and three heresies appear on stage: Calvinism,
Lutheranism and Anabaptism. The play ends in a direct imitation of
a Protestant tragedy by Daniel Heinsius, Auriacus, sive Libertas
saucia (William of Orange, or Liberty Wounded; 1602). In Heinsius’
play — written in praise of William of Orange who had led the
Protestant revolt against Catholic Spain and was subsequently
assassinated — it had been Liberty who lamented her situation and
went into exile, but in Gorcomienses it is Catholic Faith who is
exiled and uses similar phrases (ll.123-4):
Valete Batavi, discedo Fides.
O lacrymae. Agite sed tamen, Batavi, tamen
Respicite, linquo funus hoc vobis Crucis.
Adhucne saevit ira? Nec tanta nece
Severitas satiata deponit minas?
Si displicet Fides, at heu placeat suo
Qui nos cruore lavit, et pretium sui
Repetet cruore iudicans mortalium
Sub sole noxus. Sapere serius voles
Quisquis voles; nunc funus hoc linquo tibi.
Si non perosus Numen aeternum Poli
Batave superbis, nosce Iudicem tuum
Hominumque vindicem, Creatorem tuum.
Valete, Batavi, cedo, discedo Fides.
Heu, heu Fides! Heu heu Fides!
[Farewell, Hollanders, I, Faith, am leaving. O what tears! But
yet, come on, you Hollanders, but look, I leave behind for you this
dead cross. Is anger still pounding? Was this austerity not
saturated by so many killings, that it could stop its menaces? If
Faith is displeasing, let then He who has cleansed us with his
blood be pleasing and claim the price, judging with his blood the
guilty mortals on earth. Whoever wish to be wise, you are too late.
Now I leave behind this dead body for you. Hollander, if you rage
without hating the eternal God of Heaven, get to know your Judge,
the one who punishes people, your Creator. Farewell, Hollanders, I
am leaving, I, Faith are going away. Ah, ah, Faith! Ah, ah,
Faith!][footnoteRef:34] [34: Cf. Heinsius, Auriacus, ll. 2064–66
and 2101–5: ‘concidit, iacet iacet,/ Cor Illud orbis, magna
Belgarum salus./ Heu heu heu heu; and Valete cives, sancta Libertas
abit,/ Abivit ille, quem videtis hic tamen,/ Abivit ille, praevium
e terris sequor./ Valete cives. Sancta Libertas abit./ Heu heu heu
heu’; see Heinsius, Auriacus, sive Libertas saucia (1602), ed. by
Jan Bloemendal (Voorthuizen: Florivallis, 1997), 2 vols., Vol. 1,
364; 366.]
Vernulaeus has clearly written a play which opposes the one
Heinsius authored, setting itself against the Protestant,
rebellious Northern provinces, and offering comfort to the
inhabitants of the Southern provinces under the Habsburg rule of
Albert and Isabella, thereby legitimizing their reign. Faith — that
is, Catholic Faith — is leaving the ‘Batavians’, the inhabitants of
the Northern provinces, especially Holland, which was considered to
be the crucible of the rebellion. Moreover, Vernulaeus apparently
wants to give the martyrs of Gorcum a similar status as the
martyred father of his country, William of Orange. Faith is thus
made into an instrument of politics, warfare and theological
controversy.
Liturgy and Drama
Finally, I would like to draw attention to something often
overlooked in the critical interpretation of neo-Latin drama, but
which forms an integral part of the relationship between drama,
religion and theology.This is the role played by the liturgy, in
which religious beliefs and practices could be seen to meet.
Playwrights and their audiences attended either Catholic masses or
Protestant services and heard specific verbal formulations
regularly in those contexts, including both the ordinarium (that
part which is regular and constant, independent of the date), and
the proprium (which changes according to the day in the liturgical
year). In several suggestive instances, we encounter those rituals
found in masses or services, as well as other elements of the
liturgy, in neo-Latin plays, such as in Macropedius’ Aluta, where
for the sake of humour, the formulae of exorcism are uttered to
exorcise the ‘devil’ of drunkenness (ll. 529-33):
In nomine patris atque filii, sacri
Quoque spiritus cede, maledicte diabole,
Ab hac Dei famula et da honorem illi Deo,
Qui iudicare mortuos venturus est
Vivosque per flammam!
[In the name of the Father, and the Son, and also the Holy
Ghost, away with you, accursed devil, from this poor girl, a
servant of God, and give honour to the God who will be coming to
judge the living and the death through fire!][footnoteRef:35] [35:
See Macropedius, Aluta (1535), ed. by Jan Bloemendal and Jan W.
Steenbeek (Voorthuizen: Florivallis, 1995). The official Catholic
liturgical formula is: ‘Ergo, maledicte diabole, recognosce
sententiam tuam, et da honorem Deo vivo et vero, da honorem Jesu
Christo Filio eius, et Spiritui Sancto, et recede ab hoc
famulo[-la] N, quia istum [-am] sibi Deus et Dominus noster Jesus
Christus ad suam sanctam gratiam, fontemque Baptismatis vocare
digantus est: et hoc signum sanctae crucis signat eum, quod nos
fronti eius damus, tu, maledicte diabole, numquam audeas violare.
Per eumdem Christum Dominum nostrum, qui venturus est iudicare
vivos et mortuos, et saeculum per ignem. Amen.’ [‘Therefore,
accursed devil, acknowledge thy sentence, and give honour to the
living and true God, give honour to Jesus Christ, his Son, and to
the Holy Spirit, and depart from this servant N., because God and
our Lord Jesus Christ hath vouchsafed to call him (her) to His holy
grace and benediction and to the font of Baptism. And this sign of
the holy Cross, which we make upon his (her) forehead, do thou,
accursed devil, never dare to violate. Through the same Christ our
Lord, who shall come to judge the living and the dead’.]]
Aluta reacts by spitting out the ‘devil’. Her husband is filled
with awe, fears that the situation is serious, and is only
reassured by the priest. This scene, parodic of liturgical
‘ritual’, contributes significantly to the humour of the play.
Another interesting instance of liturgical usage in drama is the
first scene of Tobias (1598) by Macropedius’ pupil Petrus
Vladeraccus (1571-1618). The scene begins with recitation of the
formula Deus Abraham, Deus Isaac, Deus Israhel (l. 57), which is
also the beginning of prayers during Mass, especially the Mass of
adult baptism.[footnoteRef:36] [36: See Petrus Vladeraccus, Tobias
(1598), ed. by Michiel Verweij (Leuven: Leuven University Press,
2001), 82. In his commentary, Verweij cites Exodus 3: 6: Ego sum
Deus patris tui, Deus Abraham, Deus Isaac et Deus Iacob (‘I am the
God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the
God of Jacob’), but does not mention the liturgical use of the
formula. Given the relative lack of research into this subject, it
would be fruitful to explore further the relationship between drama
and liturgy.]
Related to such practice too is the fact that plays were
performed at Christian feasts, such as Corpus Christi, Shrovetide,
and Christmas, and the liturgical year relates too, of course, to
the academic calendar of the schools and universities at which
these plays were usually staged. Such timing must also have
affected, I am convinced, the interpretation or at least the
reception of drama: when Macropedius’ play about Adam and Eve,
Adamus, was performed at Christmas, its status as a play which
prefigures Christ would have been even more conspicuous than at any
other time of the year. The original performance context of
Macropedius’ Aluta, too, would have enhanced its humour: it was
performed before Lent, at a point of the church calendar when the
play’s reversal of roles would have mirrored the theatricality and
inversions of Carnival, and this setting would render the exorcist
scene we discussed above quite harmless. One could even argue that
when incorporated within these religious festivals and staged at a
particular moment of the ecclesiastical calendar, drama itself
became part of the liturgy or liturgical practice.
Conclusion
The relationship between religion and theology, on the one hand,
and drama, on the other, is a complex one, situated both in
religious matters (beliefs and practices) and in theological issues
(ethics, doctrine, or dogmatics; and biblical exegesis and
hermeneutics). Although the plays I have discussed were written by
humanists who frequently expressed their contempt for medieval
theology, they often remained within an exegetical framework
defined by those earlier theologians. Moreover, we can find several
instances of liturgical elements presented in the neo-Latin drama
of the Low Countries, not least because some of these plays were
written for Shrovetide and other significant moments in the
ecclesiastical year. Thus, religion and neo-Latin drama were often
closely connected, both in belief and in practice. We can see that
over the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,
currents of thought arising from the Reformation might have changed
people’s ‘official’ religion, but that ‘old’ beliefs were more
pertinacious than the humanists themselves would be ready to admit.
The religious and political shifts during the second half of the
sixteenth century, involving the process of confessionalization,
were reflected in the plays, as we have seen: whereas the earliest
neo-Latin humanist plays were not polemical, or were barely so, and
no clear distinction existed between ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’
plays, in later works the confessional differences become more
clearly defined, and denomination-based polemic was much more
overt, often conveyed by intertextual means as in the case of how
Vernulaeus adapts Heinsius’ Protestant Auriacus to fashion his own
Catholic Gorcomienses. As a consequence, throughout this period we
can argue that the intricate relationship between religion,
theology and drama, and between religion and politics, is mirrored
– and in several instances shaped – by neo-Latin drama, in several
distinct ways.
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