Ford, Taylor - The Early Modern Cultures of Neo-Latin Drama PDF

SUPPLEMENTA
HUMANISTICA LOVANIENSIA
XXXII
SUPPLEMENTA HUMANISTICA LOVANIENSIA
Editors: Prof. Dr. Gilbert Tournoy (General Editor)

Dr. Godelieve Tournoy-Thoen
Prof. Dr. Dirk Sacré
Editorial Correspondence: gilbert.tournoy@arts.kuleuven.be

Seminarium Philologiae Humanisticae
Blijde-Inkomststraat 21 (Box 3316)
B – 3000 Leuven (Belgium)
This publication was made possible with the financial support

of PEGASUS Limited
For the Promotion of Neo-Latin Studies
SUPPLEMENTA
HUMANISTICA LOVANIENSIA
XXXII
THE EARLY MODERN CULTURES

OF Neo-latin Drama
Edited by Philip Ford and Andrew Taylor
LEUVEN UNIVERSITY PRESS

2013
© Leuven University Press / Universitaire Pers Leuven / Presses Universitaires de
Louvain, Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium)
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this publication may be multiplied, saved in an automated datafile or made public
in any way whatsoever without the express prior written consent of the publishers.
ISBN 978 90 5867 926 0

D/2013/1869/1
NUR: 635-694
Table of Contents
— Philip Ford and Andrew Taylor, Introduction 7
— Olivier Pédeflous, Ravisius Textor’s School Drama and its

Links to Pedagogical Literature in Early Modern France 19
— Carine Ferradou, George Buchanan’s Sacred Latin

Tragedies Baptistes and Iephthes: What Place for Humankind
in the Universe? 41
— Elia Borza, La traduction de tragédies grecques: Alessandro

Pazzi de’ Medici et les problèmes liés à la métrique 63
— Howard B. Norland, John Foxe’s Apocalyptic Comedy,

Christus Triumphans 75
— Jeanine De Landtsheer, Lambertus Schenckelius’s

Tragoedia(e) Sanctae Catharinae 85
— Michiel Verweij, The Terentius Christianus at Work:

Cornelius Schonaeus as a Playwright 95
— Joaquín Pascual Barea, School Progymnasmata and Latin

Drama: thesis, refutatio, confirmatio and laus in the Dialogue
on the Conception of Our Lady (1578) by the Spanish Jesuit
Bartholomaeus Bravo (1553 or 1554–1607) 107
— Judi Loach, Performing in Latin in Jesuit-run Colleges in

Mid- to Late-17th-Century France: Why, and with what
Consequences? 113
— Jan Bloemendal, Similarities, Dissimilarities and Possible

Relations Between Early Modern Latin Drama and Drama in
the Vernacular 141
— Cressida Ryan, An Ignoramus about Latin? The Importance
of Latin Literatures to George Ruggle’s Ignoramus 159
— Sarah Knight, ‘Et spes et ratio studiorum in Caesare
tantum’: Robert Burton and Patronage 175
— Veronika Coroleu Oberparleiter, Simon Rettenpacher’s
Comedy Votorum discordia 189
— Arthur Eyffinger, ‘The Unacknowledged Legislators of
Mankind’: Greek Playwrights as Moral Guidance to Hugo
Grotius’s Social Philosophy 203
— Index nominum 219
Introduction
Unlike other literary genres that developed in the early modern period,
neo-Latin drama had a relatively complicated and at times problematic
relationship with the classical models that would ultimately come to
dominate dramatic writing in the classical tradition. To a large extent, this
can be explained through the more complex aims, history, and reception
of drama in this period as compared with poetry, for example, where the
use of classical models and forms was far more evident. In drama, especi-
ally drama designed for performance, the relationship with the audience
is far more direct and immediate, and the rich tradition of the medieval
theatre, in both Latin and the vernacular, offered popular alternative
models which influenced the themes and their treatment by neo-Latin
authors. Mystery, miracle, and morality plays maintained their popularity
long after the advent of humanism, as well as even broader comedy such
as the farce and the sotie.
At the same time, despite the potentially popularist nature of theatrical
composition, humanist colleges were quick to see the educational advan-
tages to be derived from the staging of plays performed by the pupils. On
the one hand, they offered the opportunity to put into practice the final
two divisions of rhetoric, memoria and pronuntiatio or actio, but they
also delivered stories with a clearly moral message, couched very often
in memorisable, sententia-filled language. The practice of the humanist
colleges would be taken up, with great success, in the Counter-Reforma-
tion by the Jesuits, and both types of educational institution were highly
influential in the formation of future men of the theatre. However, other
models also existed, notably in Northern Europe where the theatre flou-
rished in a more urban, bourgeois setting, typified by the literary associa-
tions which grew up in The Netherlands.
Thus, while the break between medieval and humanist poetry in many
countries was abrupt and self-conscious, the early examples of neo-Latin
drama are frequently hybrid forms, with no clear classical models. Indeed,
the theoretical basis was far from systematic, with playwrights drawing on
whatever sources they could find: Horace’s Ars poetica insofar as it relates
to the theatre, but also Roman grammarians such as Donatus in relation
to comedy, as well as the practice of, in particular, Terence. Later on,
the Greek tragic theatre would also provide a model, as well as Seneca,
8 introduction
though the influence of Aristotle’s Poetics, in particular the important

distinctions he makes between ‘history’ and ‘poetry’, ‘truth’ and ‘verisi-
militude’, and his concept of the tragic hero, would be relatively late in
coming in most European countries, and often imperfectly understood.
What was easier to understand was the formal structure and ‘rules’ of
classical drama: the five-act play, the use of the chorus, the restriction to
three speaking actors on stage at any one time, etc.
The papers in this collection dealing with neo-Latin drama were given
at the Symposium of the Cambridge Society for Neo-Latin Studies held
in September 2007 with the intention of exploring such issues. A number
of them focus on neo-Latin drama as an educational activity in humanist
colleges. Olivier Pédeflous, for example, examines the dramatic produc-
tions of the highly influential humanist and pedagogue Ravisius Textor
(Jean Tixier de Ravisy, 1493-1522). In addition to his hitherto better
known works, such as his Latin verse handbooks and didactic poems, he
was also the author of a large number of dialogi, intended less to provide
moral education for his students at the prestigious collège de Navarre in
Paris than to offer rhetorical models in the Erasmian tradition of copia,
allowing them to develop an understanding and appreciation of the flow
of good colloquial Latin and of extending their vocabulary. This did not
mean, however, that his dialogues were without a controversial side, since
Textor was a fierce defender of academic freedom in the face of increasing
centralisation and absolutism on the part of the French monarchy, and
some of his plays, including Ecclesia, in which the Church laments the
greed, incompetence, and decadence of her clergy, found favour across
the Channel in English evangelical circles.
Textor’s Dialogi were published after his death in 1530. A decade or

so later, another product of the Parisian humanist college tradition, the
Scotsman George Buchanan, was writing his own plays for performance
by the pupils of the collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux. Whereas Textor’s
plays draw to a large extent on the medieval tradition of the morality play,
whose characters are largely personified abstract concepts, Buchanan
turns to both the classical Greek theatre, in particular Euripides, and to
the Bible for the form and themes of his original tragedies, Baptistes and
Iephthes. Carine Ferradou studies these two plays, with an emphasis on
the human and ethical message which the Scottish humanist wishes to
convey in his plays. This does not mean that rhetorical considerations are
introduction9
absent in Buchanan: Ferradou shows how he provides examples of delibe-

rative rhetoric in the staging of the dilemmas that the protagonists have to
face in the two plays with regard to political and religious issues. But she
also demonstrates the way in which the plays are informed by a mixture of
classical, pagan ethics and Christian principles, which emphasise Bucha-
nan’s insistence both on the limits of the human condition, but also on
human dignity and worth. While Buchanan’s Greek-inspired tragic form,
with its episodes divided by choruses, would be supplanted in France by
the Roman model of the five-act play, the moral issues he presents, parti-
cularly in Iephthes, would certainly resonate with other playwrights.
It is precisely on the dissemination of the Greek model through translation

that Elia Borza focuses in his paper, but in an Italian rather than a French
context. Alessandro Pazzi de’ Medici translated plays both by Sopho-
cles and by Euripides into Latin in the 1520s, though they did not find
their way into print. However, his Latin translation of Aristotle’s Poetics
was published posthumously in 1536, bearing witness to the far earlier
engagement with this important work in Italy than in the rest of Europe.
Borza examines Pazzi’s translations, taking account of the constraints of
his decision to render the Greek plays into Latin verse, and highlighting
the modifications to the text that this entails. While he finds that Pazzi is
quite faithful to the original Greek in the dramatic sections of the play, the
choruses prove to be more of a challenge, leading in particular to a simpli-
fication or adaptation of much of the original imagery. He also sets the
Italian’s practice in the context of other translations, by Erasmus, Gentier
Hervet, Thomas Watson, Jean Lalamant, Thomas Kirchmayer-Nao-
georgos, and Georges Rataller.
John Foxe’s Christus Triumphans served more explicitly polemical ends

in the early decades of the Reformation, a period when English Protestant
apocalypticism emerged through the writings of John Bale, then Foxe
himself, primarily in a European context. This ostensibly allegorical play
seeks to recruit converts to religious truth, dividing Christendom into true
and false churches by asserting that the very nature of the church militant
was, and always would be, defined by the struggle between false authority
and suffering for truth. That such suffering is given meaning (in albeit
a discontinuous series of events), and implicitly seen as betokening the
ultimate good, is traced by Howard Norland in this ‘apocalyptic comedy’.
Christus Triumphans was published by Oporinus in Basle in 1556, and
10 introduction
composed during Foxe’s period of exile from Catholic England during

Mary’s reign (1553-58), a religious milieu contrasting starkly with those in
which most neo-Latin ‘academic’ drama is found. His deepening interest
in church history and the related interpretation of the biblical book of
Revelation – indeed how Revelation is the hermeneutic key to the true
understanding of historical events – finds perhaps its first major expres-
sion in the play; it is unclear how long it had taken to complete alongside
his other projects, including the Commentarii rerum in ecclesia gestarum
(Strasbourg, 1554), the Latin precursor to the English Acts and Monu-
ments, the comprehensive martyrology of the elect which Foxe had started
under Edward (1547-53). Norland underlines the stylistic and theological
need to see Christus Triumphans as a comedy rather than a tragicomedy,
given the play’s imitation of the language of Roman comedy in relation to
the themes of Christian redemption and the final apocalyptic triumph over
evil. The essay also argues that the play owes fewer debts to the Lutheran
Naogeorgus’s antipapal play, Pammachius, styled tragoedia nova, which
was dedicated to Archbishop Cranmer in 1538 and may have influ-
enced Bale’s drama, particularly his King Johan. Against the high style
required of tragedy (or, arguably, a mixed register for tragicomedy), the
evil figures of Foxe’s play are low, as Norland observes, inviting laughter
and mockery in their absurdity and pantomimic excesses of colloquial
language. The ecclesiological bent of the drama is evident in the chrono-
logical span of the action, which asserts a punctuated pattern of the strug-
gles of Christ against Antichrist throughout human history to the present
day; so although, for example, 300 years elapses between Acts III and IV,
a kind of analogical repetition stands in place of the dramatic unities. The
fifth and closing act brings the apocalyptic history up to date, with Philip
II, Mary, and Reginald Pole as Satan’s supporters, with another Satanic
mouthpiece recalling the eminent Protestants cruelly martyred at Oxford
only months before the play’s publication. Where Foxe’s exilic compo-
sition of Christus Triumphans represents the limits of his resistance to
the forces of Antichrist, he has the play’s Ecclesia finally preach suffe-
ring in patience in the hope of the ultimate providential triumph of the
apocalyptic pattern: thus we are left looking towards comedy’s fulfilment
– the marriage of Ecclesia with Christ. Yet here lies the generic crux:
the faithful figures must wait, stoically, as Norland suggests, and endure
whatever suffering providence still has in store. For Foxe and other mille-
narians, it could not be for long.
introduction11
Where some neo-Latin drama addressed larger readerships in print,

others designed for local stages have more tenuous survivals. The essay
by Jeanine De Landtsheer discusses the tantalising relationship between
two versions of the ‘tragedy’ of St Catharine of Alexandria. The text of
one version survives in an anonymous late sixteenth-century manuscript
in Mechelen, the other version only as an account of a performance of the
Latin play – on St Catharine’s Day, 25 November 1588 – preserved in the
verse of Balthasar Moretus, most probably offered to his older brother,
Melchior, who had recently moved from the school they both attended in
Antwerp to the Collège d’Anchin at Douai in 1588. The author of this play
was Lambertus Schenkelius, formerly rector of the municipal school at
Mechelen, who moved to Antwerp during the summer of 1588, offering,
it seems, private tuition and lodgings to Balthasar’s contemporaries at
the chapter school of Our Lady’s cathedral (Papenschool). Balthasar’s
hexameters summarise a play he saw, or possibly in which he performed,
offering engaging detail of the stage business, for example, the role
possibly played by cabbages in the various beheadings. De Landtsheer
also ventures an alternative interpretation of the lines usually understood
as a metatheatrical intervention of the dramatist in which the audience
is addressed. The final part of her essay shows how the surviving but
anonymous Tragoedia Catharinae, preserved in manuscript among the
documents of the Chapter of St Rombout’s Cathedral in the Archive of the
archiespiscopate of Mechelen, differs from the play Balthasar described.
The discussion sustains the possibility that Schenkelius was the author
of both, adapting the earlier text to the size, and linguistic and theatrical
competence of student-players in Antwerp, as well as, possibly, the diffe-
rent tastes and degrees of sophistication of the audiences. The essay thus
offers a valuable glimpse of the ways in which texts and performances of
neo-Latin drama involved the fledgling humanists of the Low Countries
in the later sixteenth century.
The example of Roman comedy and the religious interests of early

modern Europe find a very different intersection in Michiel Verweij’s
essay on Cornelius Schonaeus (1541-1611), the productive rector of the
Latin school of Haarlem who wrote seventeen plays of enduring appeal.
In Schonaeus’s dramatic works we find expressed the trend towards a
more sustained seriousness and moralisation in school drama, reflecting
in part the increasingly sober religious concerns of the later sixteenth
century. Focusing on his first play, Tobaeus (1568) – drawn from the
12 introduction
deuterocanonical Book of Tobit – Verweij explores the influence of

Terence on its language and metre, offering a sense of the need for,
and difficulty in, differentiating between different kinds of debt, from
wholesale quotation to allusion and the looser employment of Terentian
diction and phrase, including the imitation of the comic use of archaism.
Yet Schonaeus’s most direct use of Terence seems to have been for charac-
terisation and moral considerations. The play is marked by the frequency
of debates and monologues, the energy of which compensates for the lack
of vigorous action found in the earlier, more Plautine, drama of Macro-
pedius and his generation. This closeness to Terence, however, results
in several striking events from the biblical story of Tobit being omitted
from direct dramatic representation. Yet where the biblical story lacks the
unities of place, time, and action, Schonaeus partly – and with a surprising
degree of success in his first play – accommodates it to his classical model
through the use of a series of characters which are d eveloped to unify
each act. Through his consideration of language, metre, and structure of
Tobaeus, Verweij shows clearly the strength of the case for acknowledging
Schonaeus as Terentius Christianus.
Jesuit education saw similar advantages in the performance of neo-Latin

drama as did the humanist colleges, with the same emphasis on rhetorical
training and moral teaching. Public performances also proved to be a
good way of advertising Jesuit colleges, and, although the Ratio studi-
orum sought to limit the extravagance of such performances, this recom-
mendation was as often as not more honoured in the breach than in the
observation. However, Jesuit colleges also encouraged the composition
of shorter dialogues, by pupils as well as teachers, and it is on one such
composition, the dialogue on the Conception of Our Lady, that Joaquín
Pascual Barea’s paper focuses. Its author has been identified as Bartho-
lomaeus Bravo (1553 or 1554-1607), and the dialogue was composed and
performed at Monterrey in 1578. Like earlier school drama, it is a hybrid
work, essentially inspired by humanist comedy, containing both prose
and verse and written in a mixture of Latin and Spanish. Pascual Barea
analyses the play, highlighting its relevance to the teaching of rhetoric
in the form of progymnasmata, or preliminary rhetorical exercises, on
which Bartholomaeus Bravo published a manual in 1589. While showca-
sing the teaching which pupils of the college benefited from, the play is
less concerned with dramatising moral issues, and focuses on illustrating
the principal elements making up the progymnasmata, sententia, confir-
matio, refutatio and laus.
introduction13
Judi Loach’s essay looks to the Jesuits in France in the latter half of the
seventeenth century, a period when neo-Latin drama experienced a parti-
cular efflorescence across that country. Loach finds the explanation for
the vigour of French neo-Latin drama in the historical circumstances
surrounding the Jesuit order, including the attractiveness of its Ratio
studiorum. Loach first offers an important contrast between the unrepre-
sentative culture of the socially élite Parisian colleges, such as La Flèche
and the Collège de Clermont, and the typical provincial colleges through
which the Jesuits delivered not merely their pious and humanistic curri-
culum, but also their particular mission, while educating the local bour-
geoisie. In 1594, in the wake of an attempted regicide in which Jesuits
were implicated, the Society of Jesus was expelled from the Kingdom of
France. The Edict of Rouen in 1603 allowed the return of the Jesuits, but
solely as educators; with their subsequent royal protection, their influ-
ence spread across France, with the significance of neo-Latin drama
rising with this proliferation of colleges refounded with Jesuit teachers.
The plays were often composed by ‘regents’ (trainee Jesuits), if, as was
commonly the case, they were teachers of the Rhetoric class; the drama
of Classical Antiquity was studied but not performed. Neo-Latin drama
was central to the humanistic training for civic as well as ecclesiastical
service, and was thus fully integrated into the Ratio studiorum, with an
oratorical emphasis on the pronuntiatio of a living language – to show
consummate rhetorical competence was, of course, the aim for those in
their final year at the colleges, as well as for their teachers. Alongside
the full account given of the pedagogical setting, Loach also focuses on
the college-town relationship, bringing out the highly integrated nature
of the annual festival in which the relationship between the college and
the civic authority was confirmed. The neo-Latin drama, often tragedy,
had supplementary intermèdes of various kinds, which reinforced the
moral didacticism. Moreover, elements of the broader context in which
the performance of these plays was to be understood were included (along
with a plot summary) in the printed relations taken away by members of
the audience. Loach brings out the topicality of a particular town’s event
and the central role of the day’s Latin drama to show how local concerns
were negotiated during these politically sensitive festivals. The essay’s
final reflections counter the assumed vigour of literary writing in both
French and Latin in the seventeenth century: instead, French is seen to
have been in decline following its acceptability as a polite language by
mid-century, whereas Latin authority was reasserted against this, with
14 introduction
the short-lived apogee of neo-Latin drama in the 1680s reflecting Latin’s

pre-eminence for the most serious kind of literary writing, tragedy in
particular.
Jan Bloemendal’s paper deals with what appears to be the exception to the
way in which drama developed in Europe. The vernacular theatre of the
Rederijkerskamers (‘rhetoricians’ chambers’) in The Netherlands devel-
oped, he argues, alongside humanist neo-Latin theatre, which ultimately,
as in other countries, took its influence from Roman comedy. However,
while seeing the two types of theatre as having differing aims, practices,
and audiences, Bloemendal argues that the developing Reformed religion,
and the relatively close contact between ‘town and gown’ in Dutch cities,
helped to establish links between the two different traditions. As a result,
there are more points of connection between the two forms of theatre than
was the case in other European countries in the sixteenth century.
Town and gown also feature in the play addressed by Cressida Ryan, the
peculiarly English and enduring expression of neo-Latin comedy, George
Ruggle’s Ignoramus, which is perhaps the best known of around 150 Latin
plays written in early modern England. Unlike Foxe’s Christus Trium-
phans, there is far firmer and more detailed evidence of its performance
from the moment of its première in 1615 before James I at Trinity College,
Cambridge, through its many revivals to 1794. Against the interest in the
play’s engagement with law, legal language, and religion, Ryan’s account
of Ignoramus foregrounds its complex literary inheritance, arguing for
a multi-layered comedy dependent on close familiarity with the Roman
and more recent vernacular comedy to which it playfully alludes. This
involved literariness perhaps explains the play’s enduring appeal well
beyond the lifespan of the legal and religious topicalities which no doubt
spiced the early reception of the piece. Ignoramus is ostensibly based on
Giambattista della Porta’s Plautine La Trappolaria (1596), yet should
not therefore be viewed as a travesty of its source; the macaronic texture
and the hybrid dramatic influences of its author, from Plautus, Terence
and Catullus to Shakespeare and Jonson may be seen as programmatic:
‘an English-style comedy written in Latin’, with a particular interest in
play-making. Moreover, Ignoramus may also be seen as having smuggled
into the learned Latin courts of the college a rattlebag of non-classical
languages and vernacular dramatic engagements. John Hawkins’s 1797
edition notes echoes from Martial, Virgil, Catullus, Juvenal, Petronius,
introduction15
Terence, Pubilius Syrus, Ovid, Lucan, Cato, Plautus, Horace, Persius

and Statius, with these intertexts deployed in various ways by Ruggle to
distinguish the learning of, and the humour working through, his charac-
ters. Ryan argues that Ruggle’s adapting of lines from classical writers
raises the level of literary competence required to understand the comedy
fully, with those suffering incomplete apprehension of the allusions and
ironies thus included in the play’s satirical interests. Metatheatricality,
perhaps picked up particularly from Plautus’s Pseudolus, also contributes
to the complex dramatic effects of the play. Moreover, having Surda, the
deaf crone, think herself praised, works not merely as an allusion – here
Catullus is in play – but a further gesture towards the notion of deafness
as a lack of literary sophistication. In teasing out the thickly interwoven
metatheatrical and intratextual fabric of Ignoramus, Ryan’s close readings
reveal the demanding elaborateness of Ruggle’s learned game.
James I is a more sustained presence in Sarah Knight’s essay. In 1621,

the Oxford-based scholar, Robert Burton (1577-1640), published the first
edition of his most famous work, The Anatomy of Melancholy. Building
on the passages in this which recall James I’s visit to the Bodleian Library,
Oxford in 1605, Knight engages with two of Burton’s Latin dramas: Alba,
which was written for the king’s visit, and produced in the hall of Christ
Church; and Philosophaster, probably composed relatively soon after-
wards, but first staged in 1618. Although the text of Alba seems to have
been lost, its unflattering reception is well recorded, and may explain the
lack of reference to it in Burton’s often heavily anecdotal later writings.
Philosophaster, however, does survive and suggests how the experience
of James’s visit remained with Burton as he developed his critique of the
ills of the university. Where the official panegyric offered by Oxford’s
orator, Isaac Wake, in 1605 flattered the king in Rex Platonicus, Burton’s
later play offers a more sceptical view of the relationship between politics
and scholarship. In reworking Wake’s topos of the king’s own imagina-
tive self-presentation as a willing prisoner of the Bodleian, Burton casts
scholars as the dead rather that the wise. Philosophaster’s treatment of the
deleterious effects on scholarship of the pursuit of patronage may be seen
as specifically applicable to the attraction of royal favour, which he seems
signally to have failed to gain through his Alba, however his account stood
– perhaps not much better – from his poems in the celebratory collection
of 1605, Musa Hospitialis Ecclesiae Christi. Knight’s tracing of the conti-
nuities between Philosophaster and Burton’s reference to it in the part
16 introduction
of the Anatomy where he discusses contemporary scholarship suggests

how he employed Latin to address his concerns more polemically to an
exclusively learned audience: it is in the Latin ‘Digression of the Misery
of Scholars’ in the Anatomy that we hear of how he ‘strung up’ the para-
sitical false scholars in Philosophaster. The essay closes with a reconsi-
deration of its opening interest in James as Alexander, the patron who,
for Burton, invited sycophantic deification. In promoting Aristotle’s fame
above his pupil’s, and by encouraging the reader to ponder the relative
virtues of power and learning, he finally invites an uneasy comparison of
the conquering Macedonian with the British king.
The continuing appeal of neo-Latin drama in an academic context is

evident in Veronika Coroleu Oberparleiter’s essay, which deals with the
comedy Votorum Discordia of the Benedictine monk Simon Rettenpa-
cher (1634-1706), written for performance at the University of Salzburg.
The play is about two brothers who have been compelled by their father
to train in professions which they find incompatible: poetry in the case of
the son who wants a military career, and vice versa in the case of the other
son. This generational conflict is viewed by Oberparleiter in the context
of similar plots and characters in Plautus and Terence, whose spirit she
sees as imbuing Rettenpacher’s comedy. Like its Roman forebears, this
play has a limited moral message to drive home, apparently siding with
young people’s desires to choose their own future professions, and it also
has a genuine aim to amuse and entertain the young audience who would
have been performing the play or sitting in the theatre. In this respect, it
represents a clear break from the rather more earnest school drama of the
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
Where other essayists in this collection engage directly with Latin drama
of the early modern period, Arthur Eyffinger offers a detailed account
of the reception of ancient dramatists by Hugo Grotius (1583-1645). The
essay traces Grotius’s deepening engagement with the corpus of, here,
Greek tragedy, in the development of his literary, philological, religious,
and political writings, arguing for the unified nature of his scholarly and
creative activities; the original legislations in the Western tradition were
transmitted in verse, with nomos resembling carmen. Moreover, the eleva-
tion of tragedy in the recently reclaimed Poetics of Aristotle impacted on
literary genre theory. Aristotelian emphases, in analysing the means and
effects of tragedy, on thematic unity, and tragedy’s preoccupation with
introduction17
magistrates and the moral considerations of private and public spheres,

combined to make these dramatic texts, in the eyes of humanists, trea-
sure-houses of material for princely counsel; stichomythia, for example,
could be read as almost forensic exchanges. Unlike Heinsius, Grotius
insisted on tragedy’s potential for ethical use in developing the discourse
of civil prudence, albeit less authoritative than biblical and historical
sources. Eyffinger articulates the integrated nature of Grotius’s work first
through his biblical plays, Adamus Exul (1601), Christus Patiens (1608),
and Sophompaneas (1635), and his commentaries on, and translations
of, Greek tragic playwrights. Unlike Aeschylus and Sophocles, Euripi-
dean drama’s sententious style and perceived ‘political’ approach fitted
Grotius’s project well. Eyffinger shows how Grotius gradually extracted
and distilled the wisdom he saw preserved in poetic and dramatic texts,
and how he wove philology into his work on the law of international rela-
tions. Thus his critical edition of Stobaeus, Dicta poetarum (1623) and his
Excerpta ex Tragoediis et Comoediis Graecis (1626) inform De Jure Belli
ac Pacis (1625), as well as his defence of the faith, De Veritate Religionis
Christianae (1627), the Latin version of the Dutch poem he composed in
1620 during his imprisonment. Throughout Grotius’s works literary texts
thus inform the political, moral, theological and philological discourses,
providing far more than merely learned embellishment. Indeed, the ever-
growing frequency of citations of Greek playwrights in his non-literary
works shows that he practised in earnest the prescriptions of his De
studiis instituendis, in which he asserted, as sixteenth-century humanists
had done, that a literary training was essential to a legal one.
These thirteen essays reflect the rich and various expressions of the
traditions of neo-Latin drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-
ries, offering stimulating continuities and contrasts between the ways
in which classical models were accommodated to early modern pedago-
gical and political ends. We find some dramatists dependent on a single
ancient dramatic authority. The subject matter of Terence’s comedies,
for example, provided congenial models for the development of school
drama, while his correctness in Latin discourse exemplified a pure and
concise everyday speech, both pedagogical norms articulated in works
such as Erasmus’s De ratione studii. Yet the closeness of imitation of
this kind, found in playwrights such as Schonaeus, may be contrasted
with the extravagant eclecticism of Ruggle’s Ignoramus, which refa-
bricated his secular Italian model through learned allusion and playful
18 introduction
metatheatricality. Buchanan’s very different kind of drama similarly

depended on a sophisticated understanding of the creative use of several
models, here the adaptation of Greek tragic drama to biblical themes and
Latin poetry. Where Buchanan’s tragedies explore human potential and
dignity to interrogate obliquely the evangelical theology which challenged
established doctrines of freewill and divine justice, John Foxe’s explicitly
polemical chiliastic comedy uses the lower dramatic form to present as
grotesque or ludicrous the false doctrine of Antichrist and to bring conso-
lation to those suffering persecution. Here, as with the other opportunities
to read these essays alongside and against one another, the nature of the
audience and the kinds of accommodation to ancient models of biblical
or non-classical matter are both deeply significant concerns. Nor does
neo-Latin drama merely occupy a range of pedagogical and scholarly
positions within insulated institutions, but also possesses, through both
performance and print, a public exposure on the religious and political
stages, performing persuasive or interrogative work of various kinds. It
thus proves itself to be a form so deeply embedded within the intellectual
and literary concerns of the early modern period that it offers a compel-
ling scene of critical debate.
Philip Ford and Andrew Taylor
E-mail: pjf2@cam.ac.uk
awt24@cam.ac.uk
Olivier Pédeflous
Ravisius Textor’s School Drama and its Links to
Pedagogical Literature in Early Modern France
It has been a long time since the question of school drama in Renaissance
Paris has been studied, and in most critical studies extant the issue has
often been reduced to the problem of historical data with links to verna-
cular drama, avoiding poetic and stylistic interests. There is no doubt that
this field has also suffered from a kind of teleological search which has
consisted in considering Renaissance drama as a first – still hesitant –
step on the path to the Golden Age of French drama i.e., the seventeenth
century, that of the sacrosanct triad of Corneille, Molière and Racine.1
As one might guess, after a brief search through the bibliography, it is
apparent that most information on the subject is out of date and mostly
unreliable.2
We know little about the exact status of drama in those days, but some
major texts have emerged from the murky background of Parisian Renais-
sance drama. On the basis of these, one can observe an increasing interest
* I thank my friends Marc-Olivier Girard, G. Hugo Tucker, Daniel Blanchard and

André Kuster-Cid for kindly reading and correcting my article and for their precious help
over the translation of Latin excerpts into English. Mathieu Ferrand and Nathaël Istasse
have competently provided their ‘textorian’ science. Philip Ford and Gilbert Tournoy have
provided appreciable criticism on precise passages of the article in the final step of the
publication. Wolfgang Jenniges has done an accurate last re-reading before publication.
1
This is the double heritage of Raymond Lebègue’s studies, certainly pioneering and
helpful, but flawed by out-dated judgements: La Tragédie religieuse en France: Les Débuts
(1514–1573) (Paris: Champion, 1929) and his article ‘L’Influence du théâtre néo-latin sur
le théâtre sérieux en langue française’, Renaissance et Humanisme, 6 (1939), 41-47.
2
See the old studies by L.-M. Tisserand, Le Théâtre au collège: étude sur les exer-
cices dramatiques dans les écoles (Sens: Charles Duchemin, 1858); E. Cougny, Etudes
historiques et littéraires sur le XVIe siècle: des représentations dramatiques et plus
particulièrement de la comédie politique dans les collèges (Paris: Impr. Impériale,
1868) (scarcely used); L. Petit de Julleville, Le Théâtre en France: histoire de la litté-
rature dramatique depuis ses origines jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: Armand Colin et Cie,
1901); G. Lanson, ‘Étude sur les origines de la tragédie classique en France: Comment
s’est opérée la substitution de la tragédie aux mystères et moralités’, Revue d’histoire litté-
raire de la France, 20 (1903), 177–231, 413–436; V.-L. Gofflot, Le Théâtre au collège du
Moyen Age à nos jours (Paris: H. Champion, 1907); R. Lebègue, La Tragédie religieuse.
Some recent material may be found in C. Mazouer, Le Théâtre français de la Renaissance
(Paris: Champion, 2002).
20 Olivier Pédeflous
in Terence,3 the most popular author after Virgil, recognised as a fruitful

quarry for Latin language learning, and, far behind these, Seneca.4 As for
Plautus, he is far less published and studied, especially for moral reasons,5
and on its own, Terence’s revival cannot account for the entire history and
characteristics of school drama. Without rehearsing the whole history of
drama from Antiquity, it is important to remember that a strong tradition
of school drama goes back to the Middle Ages, and that some preemi-
nent colleges like the Collège de Navarre are known to have valued this
practice from the early fifteenth century.6
As far as can be gleaned from our survey of the question, Latin drama
seems to have been considered a minor genre, except for religious plays,
respectable by their very subject matter, such as the Christus xylonicus
(1529) written by Nicolas Barthélemy de Loches.7 Closely linked to scho-
lastic pedagogy and consequently belonging to the category of occasional
3
H. W. Lawton, Contribution à l’histoire de l’humanisme en France. Térence en
France au XVIe siècle (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970 [1926]); Id., ‘Térence et le théâtre néo-
latin’, in De Jean Lemaire de Belges à Jean Giraudoux. Mélanges Pierre Jourda (Paris:
Nizet, 1970), pp. 37-57. More recent data may be found in N. Pucelle, ‘Lire Térence au
début du XVIe siècle en France. Etude comparative des commentaires d’Ange Politien
(1484) et de Josse Bade (1504) sur Térence’, mémoire de maîtrise (dir. by P. Galand-
Hallyn), Paris-IV Sorbonne, 2003; Bruno Bureau and Laure Hermand-Schebat, ‘Térence,
Donat, Bade’, Camenae: La Réception de la latinité tardive à la Renaissance. Actes du
séminaire de Perrine Galand (2007-2008) (forthcoming).
4
Witness the Parisian editions Decem tragoediae figuris antea non impressis (Paris:
Jean Petit, 1511) (with Girolamo Balbi’s commentary), and Senecae tragoediae diligenter
recognitae (Paris: Josse Bade and Pierre de Keysere, 1512). For a survey of Seneca’s influ-
ence in the following years, see Jean Jacquot (ed.), Les Tragédies de Sénèque et le théâtre
de la Renaissance (Paris: CNRS, 1964).
5
Despite Poliziano’s early performance of Plautus’ Menaechmi preceded by a pugna-
cious prologue, this author remains far less read, at least for dramatic aims (Poliziano,
Epistolae illustrium virorum (Paris: Jean Petit, 1526), epist. XV, f. 142r). He is more
studied out of sheer lexical interest, following the footsteps of Giovan Baptista Pio’s
Plautus integer (Milan: U. Scinzenzeler, 1500). We can mention some Parisian editions
of Plautus, e.g. the Aulularia (commentary by Mathias Ringman, the so-called Philesius)
(Paris: Jean de Gourmont, s.d. [c. 1518]), London, British Library.
6
R. Bossuat, ‘Le Théâtre scolaire au Collège de Navarre (XIVe–XVIIe siècles)’, in
Mélanges d’histoire du théâtre du Moyen-Age et de la Renaissance offerts à Gustave
Cohen (Paris: Nizet, 1950), pp. 165–76. Despite the title, this study unfortunately avoids
the very question of drama in early modern times.
7
See D. Murarasu, La Poésie néo-latine et la Renaissance des lettres antiques en
France (1500–1540) (Paris: Gamber, 1928), p. 34 and passim, and especially Raymond
Lebègue, La Tragédie religieuse, who devoted some enlightening pages to these plays.
On this author, see the few details provided by Gabriel Codina Mir (SJ), Aux sources de
la pédagogie des Jésuites: le modus parisiensis, Bibliotheca Instituti historici S. J., 28
(Rome: Institutum historicum S.J., 1968), p. 129.
Ravisius Textor’s School Drama 21
literature, this kind of drama strictly depends on micro-historical events.8

As a result, many a play has disappeared, even though several Parisian
regents are known to have composed Latin plays. This deprives us of
a valuable point of comparison. Nicolas Bérauld burned his own, as he
declares in his Dialogus…quibus dicendi extempore facultas parari
possit (1534),9 and Nicolas Petit de Bellozane, who was in contact with
Textor10 and soon to be a close friend of Rabelais’s, never mentions his
plays, and we only know about them from the testimony of Jean Bouchet,
who informs us that Petit was also a dramatic playwright.11
In the light of this brief outline, we can now investigate the work of
Ravisius Textor, the main scholarly theatrical author of this period. He left
us a significant corpus of school plays,12 even though he certainly did not
8
See M. Walsby, ‘L’Auteur et l’imprimé polémique et éphémère français au seizième
siècle’, in M. Furno et R. Mouren (eds), Auteur, collaborateur, traducteur, imprimeur…
qui écrit? (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2012), and my forthcoming paper ‘La Poésie de
circonstance néo-latine à Paris (1500–1530): retour sur une oubliée des catalogues de
bibliothèques’, which deals with the problem in this circle.
9
See J. Lecointe, L’Idéal et la différence: la perception de la personnalité littéraire
à la Renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 1993), pp. 588–9. For Bérauld’s biography, see Louis
Delaruelle, ‘Notes biographiques sur Nicole Bérault, suivies d’une bibliographie de ses
œuvres et de ses publications’, Revue des Bibliothèques, 12 (1902), 420–45; ‘Etudes
sur l’humanisme français: Nicole Bérault, notes biographiques suivies d’un appendice
sur plusieurs de ses publications’, Le Musée belge, 13 (1909), 253–312; ‘Notes complé-
mentaires sur deux humanistes’, Revue du XVIe siècle, 15 (1928), 311–23, completed by
Marie-Madeleine de La Garanderie, Christianisme et lettres profanes (Paris: Champion
1996, 2nd augmented edition), and Perrine Galand-Hallyn, ‘La praelectio sur Suétone
de Nicolas Bérauld (1515), texte latin et traduction française annotée’, Humanistica
Lovaniensia 46 (1997), 62–93; Ead., Nicolas Bérauld, Praelectio et commentaire à la
silve Rusticus d’Ange Politien (1513), with G. A. Bergère, A. Bouscharain, and O. Péde-
flous (Geneva: Droz, 2013). See also Marie-Françoise André’s PhD ‘Nicolas Bérauld,
laissé pour compte des “Bonnes Lettres”. Monographie sur l’humaniste orléanais Nicolas
Bérauld (c. 1470 – c. 1555)’ (Paris IV, 2011), dir. by P. Galand.
10
See Nicolas Petit, Sylvae. Arion, Gornais, Barbaromachia, cum aliquot hymnis
(Paris: J. de Gourmont, n.d. [c. 1523]), BnF RES M-YC-822 (1), praefatio, where he calls
him ‘our dear Ravisius’ (Ravisius noster) (f. Aiir-v). N. Istasse’s reassessment of Textor’s
birth date (see note 15) allows us to make him the colleague (and not a possible master!)
of the so-called Petit.
11
See Jean Bouchet, Epistres familieres, XXI (Poitiers: Marnef, 1545), repr. Jennifer
Beard (New York: Johnson; Paris – The Hague: Mouton, 1969), quoted by E. Picot in his
fichier, BnF, Nouvelles Acquisitions françaises, MS 23256. He refers to his ‘œuvre septe-
naire’, i.e. written in trochaic septenarii.
12
For a survey of Textor’s drama, see the old but still helpful studies by Louis Masse-
bieau, De Ravisii Textoris comoediis, seu de Comoediis collegiorum in Gallia, prae-
sertim ineunte sexto decimo saeculo […] (Paris: J. Bonhoure, 1878), and Jules Vodoz,
Le Théâtre latin de Ravisius Textor (Winterthur: Geschwister Aiegler, 1898). Maurice
intend to compose a collection of them, owing to their ephemeral status.

My purpose here is to show the unity of thought and style, whatever the
genres he practised, and the continuity of his project, inspired by lexico-
graphic and aesthetic aims. It is also my aim to offer new evidence about
the close connections between school plays and Latin poetry handbooks
or didactic poems. As the question has been considered exclusively in a
positivistic sociological and historical way, the subject obviously needs a
reassessment based on the numerous studies of the last thirty years about
Latin pedagogy and humanist commentaries. Owing to the impossibility
of an exhaustive survey, I shall address these questions through detailed
analysis of one of these dialogi, the so-called Terra, aetas, homo et alii
plerique, adding some examples from another play, Thersites, clearly a
parody of the great classical epic.
***
The name of Ravisius Textor – in French, Jean Tixier de Ravisy – is not

famous in the history of great literature. However, even Shakespeare in
England and Lope de Vega in Spain were not ashamed of drawing largely
from his useful mythological, historical, and prosopographical compen-
dia.13 To be sure, before becoming one of the main grammar school
authors of the early sixteenth century in Paris, he was, according to tradi-
tion, an authoritative compiler, able to compete with Italian and German
masters.
His biography is insufficiently documented: all we have is Maurice
Mignon’s studies,14 written nearly a century ago, which do not provide
Mignon’s Etudes sur le théâtre français et italien de la Renaissance (Paris, 1923) is a

misnomer, since he does not deal with drama, but rather with the authors’ biographies.
See Mathieu Ferrand, ‘Le Théâtre des collèges: la formation des étudiants et la transmis-
sion des savoirs aux XVe et XVIe siècles’, Camenulae, 3 (17 January 2009), Les Formes
de transmission du savoir, http://www.paris-sorbonne.fr/fr/IMG/pdf/Mathieu_2.pdf; Id.,
‘Le théâtre des collèges au début du XVIe siècle: les Dialogi (1530) de Johannes Ravisius
Textor’, BHR 72 (2010), 337–368.
13
See W. J. Ong, ‘Commonplace Rhapsody: Ravisius Textor, Zwinger, and Shake-
speare’, in Classical Influences on European Culture A.D. 1500–1700, ed. R. R. Bolgar
(Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 91–126; S. A.
Vosters, ‘Lope de Vega y Juan Ravisio Textor: nuevos datos’, Iberoromania, 2 (1975),
69–101; V. Infantes, ‘De Officinas y Poliantes: los diccionarios secretos del Siglo de
Oro’, in Homenaje a Eugenio Asensio (Madrid: Gredos, 1988), pp. 243–57. His name is
kept alive, even through the learned nineteenth century. Edgar Allan Poe cites his name,
however in a bad sense, in the short story entitled The Assignation.
14
M. Mignon, ‘Un recteur de l’Université de Paris au XVIe siècle: Jean Tixier de
Ravisy, humaniste et poète nivernais’, Bulletin de la Société Scientifique et Artistique de
all the clarity one could wish for, and they are badly in need of replace-
ment. Nathaël Istasse15 very recently has proposed a reassessment of the
question, and has shown that Textor was born c. 1493 (and not in the 1470s
or 1480s as was believed). In spite of the lack of information about Textor’s
public and private activities, a few important facts must be underlined. He
was a teacher at the Collège de Navarre, an institution in which a strong
tradition of school drama was current from the late fourteenth century.16
Textor can be considered as an Erasmian schoolteacher:17 questions of
copia (abundance) in style have a large part in Textor’s books. A study of
his method gives another indication of the wide diffusion of Erasmus’s
pedagogy of the late 1510s in Paris.18 Textor is also highly indebted to
Italian scholarship, especially to Lorenzo Valla and Angelo Poliziano’s
poetics, and was one of the leading Parisian schoolmasters to be aware of
the revolution of the Humanist movement. He belonged to an ill-defined
group of open-minded Humanists, among whom we find early Evangel-
ical proponents who taught at the Collège de Navarre in the 1520s, such as
Pierre Danès, the famous Hellenist, Oronce Finé, the mathematician or, in
other colleges, Jacques Thouzat (Tusanus) and Nicolas Bérauld.19 It seems
Clamecy, 7 (1911–12), 58–69, and ‘Les Œuvres de Jean Tixier de Ravisy’, ibid., 8 (1913),
17–31, both reprinted in Etudes sur le théâtre français et italien de la Renaissance (Paris,
1923).
15
N. Istasse, ‘Joannes Ravisius Textor: mise au point biographique’, Bibliothèque
d’Humanisme et Renaissance (quoted henceforth BHR), 69 (2007), 691–703. A certifica-
tion of degrees required to supplicate for ecclesiastical benefices dated 1512, preserved
in the University Library of the Sorbonne, Archives de l’Université de Paris, Reg. 89, f.
59r, edited by J. K. Farge, Students and Teachers at the University of Paris: The Genera-
tion of 1500 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), no. 225, pp. 126–7, refers to a ‘Johannes
Textoris’, distinct from our Johannes Ravisius Textor, as N. Istasse has indicated to me.
In his 2006 book, Farge has corrected the erroneous deduction which he had presented
in his Biographical Register of Paris Doctors of Theology (Toronto: Pontifical Institute
of Medieval Studies, 1980), no. 42, 42. N. Istasse is currently engaged in the edition of
Textor’s opera omnia: one volume will contain the Dialogi, another the Epigrammata.
16
R. Bossuat, ‘Le Théâtre scolaire au collège de Navarre’, pp. 165–76.
17
Cf. the prefatory epistle of his Officina (Paris: Regnault Chaudiere, 1520) and
especially his praefatio to Ulrich von Hutten, Ulrichi de Hutten Equitis Germani Aula,
Dialogus (Paris: Antoine Aussourd, 1519), f. * 2.
18
Renaudet, Préréforme et humanisme à Paris pendant les premières guerres d’Italie
(1494–1517) (Paris, 1916 = Paris: Librairie d’Argences, 1953), passim; M.-M. de La
Garanderie, ‘Recueils parisiens de lettres d’Erasme (Aspects de l’érasmisme à Paris, et
en Champagne , c. 1523)’, BHR, 31 (1969), 449–465; J.-C. Margolin, ‘Erasme en France’,
Erasme: une abeille laborieuse, un témoin engagé (Caen: Paradigme, 1993).
19
For more details about this circle, see the old but still valuable studies by M. Forget,
‘Les Relations et les amitiés de Pierre Danès’, Humanisme et Renaissance, 3 (1936),
365–83, to be completed by S. Bamforth and J. Dupèbe, ‘Un poème sur le Camp du drap
d’or’, BHR, 52 (1990), 635–42 (esp. pp. 640–1); J. Dupèbe, ‘Un ami de Clément Marot,
that Textor was himself a resolute opponent of the power of François Ier
and a defender of the independence of the University, and he insisted
on the King’s respecting the institution’s prerogatives. He was indeed a
strong defender of the liberty of drama performance, as is revealed from
an extract of a letter published in the Epistolae:20
Nihil istic noui agitur. In regum festo tria aut quatuor tantum collegia mi-
mos et comoedias recitauere, et eas quidem satyricis immunes aculeis:
timuit enim capiti suo unusquisque, quorumdam periculo factus cautior, qui
(quod regiae maiestati et muliebri perduelles stigma inussissent) catenati ad
regem non tam ducti, quam tracti sunt. Magister Durandus, cui doleo, adhuc
in uinculis est: dolorem tamen, sperato reginae aduentu, ubi se liberum fore
confidit, solatur.
(There is nothing new here [sc. in Paris]. Only three ou four schools per-
formed mimes or comedies on the feast of the Epiphany, and without any
satirical criticism, because each and everyone feared for his life, being
made more cautious by the misfortune of certain individuals accused of be-
ing enemies, for having stigmatised the majesty of the King and of women
– they were more dragged than led in front of the King, laden with chains.
Master Durand – I pity him – is still in jail; however he comforts himself
waiting for the time of the Queen’s return, when he hopes to be freed.)
This is the political background that should be kept in mind for a proper
understanding of Textor’s Dialogi, and we see here the links with contem-
porary French drama that had developed in intellectual circles.21
le médecin Michel Amy’, Cité des hommes, cité de Dieu: travaux sur la littérature de
la Renaissance en l’honneur de Daniel Ménager (Geneva: Droz, 2003), pp. 190–5. For
Finé or Fine, see the unpublished PhD thesis of Richard P. Ross, ‘Studies on Oronce Fine
(1494–1555)’ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971).
20
Ravisius Textor, Epistolae (Paris: Prigent Calvarin and Thomas de Villiers, 1529),
ep. 50. This extract is quoted in the French translation by E. Cougny, Etudes histo-
riques…, pp. 43–4 and L. Petit de Julleville, Les Comédiens en France au Moyen Age
(Paris, 1885), p. 300. The letter, dated 18. Cal. Feb. (15 January, presumably 1516), is
certainly a reaction to the recent decree of the Parlement de Paris, on 5 January 1516
[n.st.], which strongly recommended the regents ‘de ne jouer, faire ne permettre de jouer,
en leurs collèges, aucunes farces, sottises et autres jeux contre l’honneur du Roy, de la
Reyne, de Madame la duchesse d’Angoulesme, mère du dit seigneur […] sur peine de
punition contre ceux qui feront le contraire, telle que la cour verra estre à faire’, quoted by
Félibien and Lobineau, Histoire de la ville de Paris (Paris, 1725), IV, 634.
21
See J. Koopmans’ authoritative studies ‘Du texte à la diffusion, de la diffusion aux
textes: l’exemple des farces et des sotties’, Le Moyen Français, 46–47 (2000), 309–326,
and ‘How Paris Discovers Propaganda: Theatre, Print, and Subcultures’, in Normative
Zentrierung: Normative Centering, ed. R. Suntrup et J. R. Veenstra (Frankfurt: P. Lang,
2002), pp. 287–301. See also the recent study on the Basochian circle by M. Bouhaïk-
Gironès, Les Clercs de la Basoche et le théâtre comique (Paris 1420–1550) (Paris:
Champion, 2007).
My reference text for Textor’s Dialogi is the posthumous edition of

1530, published by Henri Labbé assisted by the otherwise unknown
Nicolaus Faber and Nicolas Regnault, under an apocryphal title.22 This
edition was frequently reprinted over the course of the whole century,
and was a bestseller in its time. The precise dating of the plays is an
intricate question that requires a study in itself;23 some of the plays were
obviously written in the very last years of the reign of Louis XII. Here, it
will suffice to stress that the publishers clearly chose to make a miscel-
lany, and did not intend to establish the complete corpus of the plays, as
may be surmised from the introductory epistle: Habes Lector candide
Ioannis Ravisii Textoris aliquot dialogos e numerosa tot tantarumque
editionum turba selectos (Excellent reader, here are some Dialogues by
Ravisius Textor selected from a host of so many weighty editions). Louis
Massebieau is right when deducing from the previous lines the loss of
separate editions of certain plays; they were not preserved because of
the often fragile nature and frequent manipulation of these separata.24
The Dialogi are published with so-called Epigrammata, mostly academic
poems, and partly private poems addressed to friends. Textor’s heirs
consciously decided to exclude certain satirical plays, ‘per temporum
22
Dialogi aliquot…adiecta sunt…Epigrammata aliquot, ed. Henri Labbé and Nicolas
Regnault. Jean Bignon (?) for Regnault Chauldière (with a privilege from the Parlement,
dated 31 August 1530). Only one complete copy has been preserved: Boulogne-sur-Mer,
Bibliothèque Municipale. See B. Moreau, Inventaire chronologique des éditions parisi-
ennes du XVIe siècle (Paris: Imprimerie municipale, 1982), III, no. 2302 (incomplete
copies are found in Besançon BM and Chicago, UCL). My reference edition is a copy
of the 1530 impression preserved in Paris, BnF [RES-P-Z-2394(1)] which belonged to
Pierre-Daniel Huet, bishop of Meaux. Only two plays are available in modern editions,
with an English translation: Ecclesia: A Dialogue by Ravisius Textor Translated from
the ‘Dialogi Aliquot’ by his Contemporary Radcliff, edited by Hertha Schulze (Roch-
ester, NY: Press of the Good Mountain, 1980); Thersites, Three Tudor Classical Inter-
ludes: Thersites’, ‘Jacke Jugeler’, ‘Horestes’, edited by Marie Axton (Cambridge: D. S.
Brewer, 1982), Appendix II, pp. 141–55. It may be noted that a manuscript of the Dialogi
is preserved at Evora, Biblioteca Pública [C XIVd/1–16], ff. 91–115v: Dialogi aliquot
Ravisii Textoris (and Epigrammata aliquot Joannis Ravisii Textoris, ff. 115v–118v). See
P. O. Kristeller, Iter italicum (London and Leiden: Brill, 1989), IV, 453b. Not seen by us.
23
See material in Cougny, Etudes historiques, pp. 26, 31 (but the question needs reas-
sessment). Philarète Chasles, ‘Les Gloires perdues — une comédie jouée au collège de
Navarre en 1510’, Revue de Paris, 9 jan. 1842, gives no argument for ascribing the date
1510 to the performance of the play Terra et homo.
24
Massebieau, De Ravisii Textoris comoediis, p. 18. Moreau, Inventaire chrono
logique, does not mention these lost volumes. I have searched in vain the catalogues of
the great early sixteenth-century libraries, still (partly) preserved, viz. those of Beatus
Rhenanus, Conrad Peutinger, Claude Guilliaud, Fernando Colón, and the main collec-
tions of nineteenth-century scholars: Louis de Rothschild, Hector de Backer etc.
impietatem’, and to give a strictly educational turn to the book, in keeping

with Textor’s initial project.25 However, this does not take into account the
political status of certain dialogues, such as Ecclesia, which belongs to
the sotie genre, and seems very precisely linked to the 1516 Concordat.26
In Ecclesia, we see the Church lamenting over the greed, incompetence,
and decadent lifestyle of the clergy. This vitriolic attack was not always
well received: two extant copies of the 1534 edition of this very play are
mutilated.27
Within a short space of time, the diffusion of the book went beyond
school circles; the first mention of it appears among English Evangeli-
cals, as Marie Axton has shown, an indication that Textor’s publishers
were not able to erase the heretical content of the plays. This aspect of
Textor’s reception has hitherto been unknown to French scholars. A
version of Textor’s Iuuenis, Pater et Uxor, attributed possibly to Nicolas
Udall, was published in London during the 1530s (before 1534?).28 As for
Robert Radcliffe,29 Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, who belonged to
Thomas Cromwell’s circle, he translated three of Textor’s dialogues into
English prose, including the heretical Ecclesia (The Good Man and the
Church in his version), and he dedicated the manuscript to King Henry
25
Ibid. But it may be noted that Massebieau overinterprets the expurgation of this
edition because he was only acquainted with the 1536 edition, so he had in mind the
context of the ‘affaire des Placards’. There is no doubt, however, that the heirs’ words
give us some clues about the real tensions over the reign of François Ier around 1530. See
Jean Dupèbe, ‘Un document sur les persécutions de l’hiver 1533–1534 à Paris’, BHR, 48
(1986), 405–17.
26
See Ch.-A. Camay, ed., [Théodore de Bèze], Satyres de la cuisine papale (Geneva:
Droz, 2005), p. 62: ‘Messieurs les Superintendens / qui cachez d’abus l’inventaire, / Les
concordats qui vous font taire / Vous font grand ouvrage endurer.’
27
As appears from Moreau’s description in the Inventaire chronologique, IV no. 1158
(ff. O2–O8 and folio leaf P have been cut off). The mutilated copies, both in Spain, are in
Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional and Santiago de Compostela, Biblioteca Municipal.
28
Pater Filius et Uxor, or The Prodigal Son (London: Wiliam Rastell, n.d.), described
by W. W. Greg, A Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the Restoration, Biblio-
graphical Society, monograph XXIV, vol. I, 1939, no. 19, 93. From the only extant copy
(Cambridge University Library) are preserved two fragments used as end papers in the
binding of Claudii Altissiodorensis… in Epistolam ad Galatas doctiss. enarratio (Paris,
1543). Cf. Axton Thersites, p. 6, n. 17, who transcribes a fragment of the folio leaf (lines
1–4, 57–75). For a useful survey of the fragments of Early English Printing, see Arthur
Freeman, ‘Everyman and Others, part I: Some Fragments of Early English Printing, and
their Preservers’, The Library, 7th series, 9 (2008), 267–305.
29
The author is Robert and not Ralphe (as Marie Axton says, Thersites, p. 6), as
appears from Margaret Rogerson’s research: ‘Robert/Ralph Radcliffe: a Case of Mistaken
Identity’, Notes and Queries, 47 (2000), 23–7.
VIII.30 Robert Hornback, following Marie Axton’s conclusions, even

evokes ‘a virtual English Textor movement’.31 The diffusion in England
of Textor’s Dialogi is quite unclear. It is not impossible that the antiquary
John Leland (1502 or 1506–1552), who certainly studied in Paris under
François Dubois in the early 1520s (c. 1523–5?), may have been involved.
At the very moment of Textor’s death (on 3 December 1522),32 Leland
may have introduced Textor’s plays in England. Indeed we know that he
was closely linked to Udall, and that they wrote in collaboration with each
other.33
We should, now, examine Textor’s publications. He used to be treated
as a reprobate and untidy compiler, more ‘digestor quam congestor’, to
take up Robert Estienne’s bon mot on Aulus Gellius’s Noctes Atticae.34
However, it should not be forgotten that he belonged to the same circle
as Nicolas Bérauld, Salmon Macrin, and François Dubois, a group of
Humanists now considered as progressive teachers, eager to transmit the
Italian philological heritage.35 Textor’s ambitious project, as early as 1510,
is based on the poetics of varietas, and his handbooks and encyclopaedic
30
Axton, Thersites, p. 7, n. 18. The manuscript is now preserved at the University of
Wales Library, MS Brogyntyn 24.
31
R. Hornback, ‘Lost Conventions of Godly Comedy in Udall’s Thersites’, Studies in
English Literature 1500–1900, 47 (2007), 281–303 (p. 287).
32
See Istasse, ‘Joannes Ravisius Textor’, pp. 700–702.
33
For useful data on John Leland at this time, see Lucy Toulmin Smith, ed., The
Itinerary of John Leland, (London, 1907), vol. I, intro, VIII–IX; L. Bradner, ‘Some
Unpublished Poems by John Leland’, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association,
71 (1956), 827–36, and the up-to-date presentation by J. P. Carley, ‘John Leland in Paris:
the Evidence of his Poetry’, Studies in Philology, 83 (1986), 1–50.
34
Quoted by J. Céard, ‘De l’encyclopédie au commentaire: le temps de la Renais-
sance’, in R. Schaer (ed.), Tous les savoirs du monde: encyclopédies et bibliothèques de
Sumer au XXIe siècle (Paris: BnF and Flammarion, 1996), 164–9 (p. 166).
35
M.-M. de La Garanderie, Christianisme et lettres profanes; P. Galand-Hallyn,
‘Nicolas Bérault lecteur d’Ange Politien’, in Poliziano nel suo tempo, Atti del VI
Convegno internazionale, Chianciano-Montepulciano, 18–20 July 1994, ed. L. Secchi
Tarugi (Florence: Franco Cesati editore, 1996), 411–27, and Un professeur–poète huma
niste: Johannes Vaccaeus, La Sylve parisienne (1522), édition, traduction et commen-
taire de P. Galand-Hallyn, avec la collaboration de G. A. Bergère (Geneva: Droz, 2002);
Jean Lecointe, La Poetica de François Dubois, Habilitation thesis, 2000 (Université de
Paris-IV Sorbonne). It also emerges from A. Coroleu’s studies, ‘Some Teachers on a Poet:
the Uses of Poliziano’s Latin Poetry in the Sixteenth-Century Curriculum’, in Poets and
Teachers: Latin Didactic Poetry and the Didactic Authority of the Latin Poet from the
Renaissance to the Present, ed. Y. Haskell and P. Hardie (Bari: Levante editori, 1999),
167–81; Id., ‘Poliziano in Print: Sixteenth-Century Editions and Commentaries from a
Pedagogical Perspective’, Les Cahiers de l’Humanisme, 2 (2001), 191–222.
writings present an Asianist vision of Latin rhetoric.36 The introductory

material of these books is quite clear about his literary project,37 but the
frequent omission of these guiding poems in the following editions38 – in
Sebastian Gryphius’s editions for example – leads to a misinterpretation
of Textor’s poetics and to a kind of ‘ouvroir de littérature potentielle’, as
Jean Lecointe says wittily.39
Textor wrote the Epitheta, first published in 1518, to help young Lati-
nists, by suggesting appropriate epithets for famous characters belonging
to classical mythology or history, and to provide vocabulary for deco-
rative amplification.40 Epithets are arranged for ready retrieval in alpha-
betical order under the nouns to which they are linked.41 Two years later,
he published the Officina,42 a kind of comprehensive compilation inspired
by great contemporary Italian farragines, which contain many lists and
are arranged according to the dynamics of topic series. All these compi-
lations (including possibly Synonyma43) are supposed to give pupils (and
36
For a valuable summary on the question, see J. F. d’Amico, ‘The Progress of
Renaissance Latin Prose: the Case of Apuleianism’, Renaissance Quarterly, 37 (1984: 3),
351–92, and for the application of these theories to Parisian circles, J. Lecointe, L’Idéal
et la différence.
37
See the introductory epistle by Nicolas Bérauld (ff. ***viv–viir) and poems in the
tone of sylvae by Gilles de Maisières (f. *** viir), and J. Salmon Macrin (f. ***viiv).
38
The omission is not systematic. In the edition published by Pierre Rigaud, Lyon,
1605, P. ab Area Baudosa’s dedicatory epistle (dated ‘Kal. Aug. 1587’) deals with the
aesthetics of the silva (f. A2r–v), and the poem of Gilles de Maisières is reproduced with
special emphasis (f. A4r).
39
Lecointe, L’Idéal, p. 425.
40
Ravisius Textor, Specimen epithetorum (Paris: Henri Estienne, 1518).
41
See the very interesting analysis by I. D. McFarlane, ‘Reflections on Ravisius
Textor’s Specimen epithetorum’, in Classical Influences on European Culture 1500–
1700, ed. R. R. Bolgar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 81–90. See
also my paper, ‘De l’art de recoudre les “vieilles rapetasseries”: rééditions et actualisa-
tions des Epitheta et de l’Officina de Ravisius Textor’, in A. Reach-Ngô, T. Tran Quoc and
A. Arzoumanov (eds), Le Discours du livre: Mise en scène du texte et fabrique de l’œuvre
sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2011), pp. 299-319. Another essay on
the same material is by N. Istasse, ‘Les Epitheta et l’Officina de Joannes Ravisius Textor:
conception auctoriale et destinée éditoriale’, in M. Furno (ed.), Qui écrit ? Figures de
l’auteur et des co-élaborateurs du texte xve-xviiie siècle (Lyon: ENS Editions/Institut
d’Histoire du Livre, 2009), pp. 111-135. For a general picture of this practice, see the
authoritative study by D. T. Starnes and E. W. Talbert, Classical Myth and Legend in
Renaissance Dictionaries (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955).
42
Ravisius Textor, Officina (Paris: Antoine Aussourd and Regnault Chaudière, 1520).
Both the Epitheta and the Officina present an astonishing variety of sources, including
neo-Latin ones.
43
The oldest edition I have been able to find so far is dated 1528 (Antwerp: Johannes
Grapheus), so after Textor’s death. The three extant copies known to me are preserved at
not only tirones) convenient material whatever the situation they have to
face when reading or composing Latin verse.44
Textor’s Dialogi should be read in the same way. They are closely
linked to school rhetorical practices and are part of a general pedagogical
programme. From this perspective, indeed, comedy is not only a valued
tool of instruction and persuasion, but also a method to help students gain
a great deal of repetitious practice in grammar. Thanks to Textor’s books,
they can also develop a feeling for the flow of everyday Latin conversation
and apply it to their own speaking and writing in the numerous official
vocations in which Latin was still in daily use. The question of vocabu-
lary, so prominent in the grammatical tradition, as Valla’s (and Agostino
Dati’s) Elegantiae and Perotti’s Cornucopiae make abundantly clear,45 is
a matter of great interest in Textor’s plays. Textor’s dialogi exemplify how
one can reinvest valuable excerpts taken from Latin writers (Classical,
Late, Medieval and Renaissance ones). He practises the art of conta
minatio, by picking a hapax and enriching old topics in order to create
sophisticated lines based on relevant Classical allusions. He appears then
as a scholarly heir of the great Poliziano.
The first play of the anthology, Terra, is based on this kind of variegated
style.46 In the Earth’s lament, Textor puts together well-known examples
of abundance in a long pathetic monologue with florid enumerations:47
Quis mihi tot linguas, quot creditur Argus ocellis
Perdius et pernox phariam seruasse iuuencam,
Praebuerit? quis tot mihi conferet ora, quot annos
Garrula fatiloquis ascribit fama Sybillis?
Quis tot praebuerit fibras, quot vana deorum 5
Augsburg, Staats– und Stadtbibliothek [Alt 721 #(Beibd. 4)], Michelstadt, Kirchenbiblio-
thek and Oxford, Bodleian Library.
44
On these questions, see my paper ‘L’Atelier du poète–lexicographe au début du
XVIe siècle en France’, Camenae, 1, (January 2007), electronic review readable on the
web-site of the University of Paris-Sorbonne. http://www.paris-sorbonne.fr/fr/IMG/pdf/
Olivier_Pedeflous_definitif.pdf
45
B. Colombat, La Grammaire latine en France à la Renaissance et à l’Age Clas-
sique, Théories et pédagogie (Grenoble: Editions de l’Université Stendhal-Grenoble
3, 1999), pp. 31–3. More details may be found in J.-L. Charlet, ‘Tortelli, Perotti et les
Elégances de L. Valla’, Res Publica Litterarum, 24 (2001), 94–105.
46
On this play, see Massebieau, De Ravisii Textoris comoediis, pp. 43–5 and Vodoz,
Le Théâtre latin, pp. 52–3. For the variegated style, see P. Galand-Hallyn, Le Reflet des
fleurs: Description et métalangage poétique d’Homère à la Renaissance (Genève: Droz,
1994).
47
Ravisius Textor, Dialogi, 1, Terra, Aetas, Homo et alii plerique, ff. Air–Biiv (f.
Aiiiir).
Milia primorum ueteres habuisse dierum

Ascrei referunt monumenta diserta poetae?
Ferrea quis dederit tot guttura, quot tibi Xerxes
Spicula fecerunt stupidum tenebrescere Phoebum?
Quis tot inundantes lachrymarum det mihi rivos 10
Immersum quot propter equum te, Cyre, vetustas
Audacem memorat sparsisse in flumina Gangem?
Quot Romanorum ferales milia Cannae
Fecistis patrio post arma carere sepulchro?
Mi dolor est: quem nec verbis aequare, nec ullo 15
Flere satis gemitu liceat.
(Who will give me as many tongues as Argus was said to have eyes
To keep a watch day and night over the Pharian heifer?
Who will give me as many mouths as garrulous fame
Assigns of years to the prophesying Sibyls?
Who will grant me as many entrails as the Ancients 5
Of yore had thousands of vain gods
According to the long discourses of the Ascrean poet [Hesiod]?
Who will give me as many iron throats as the arrows
Which darkened the stupefied Sun for you, Xerxes?
Who will give me as many overflowing rivers of tears 10
As you shed in the Ganges, fearless Cyrus,
According to the tradition, for your drowned horse?
Or as the many thousands of Romans at the battle of Cannae
Whom you, Manes, deprived of a sepulchre in their native land?
Such is my grief to which I cannot do justice 15
With my words nor weep enough with any of my moaning.)
Textor takes up again some famous comparisons: Ovid, Metamorphoses

I. 624, Virgil, Aeneid VI. 625–7; Hesiod, Works and Days; Livy etc. In
order to be more precise about the rhetorical aims mentioned above, this
first dialogue can be linked by its vocabulary to the broad trend of peda-
gogic sylvae which seems to have originated in the Collège de Montaigu
i.e., those copious poems mixed didactic material and poetic celebration
in order to attain rhetorical maestria by imitation of the grand style.48
48
On this trend, see P. Galand-Hallyn, ‘Quelques coïncidences (paradoxales?) entre
l’Epître aux Pisons d’Horace et la poétique de la silve (au début du XVIe siècle en France)’,
BHR, 60 (1998), 609–39; Ead., Un professeur-poète. See also J. Lecointe, ‘Nicolas Petit,
Bouchet, Rabelais: la poétique de Politien du “cercle de Montaigu” au “cercle de Fontenay-
au-Comte” [sic for Fontaine-le-Comte]’, in Jean Bouchet: traverseur des voies périlleuses
(1476–1557), Actes du colloque de Poitiers (30–31 août 2001), réunis par J. Britnell et
N. Dauvois (Paris: Champion, 2003), pp. 175–93, and A. Laimé, ‘L’influence d’Ange
Politien dans la préface des Silvae de Nicolas Petit (1522)’, Camenae, 1 (January 2007):
http://www.paris-sorbonne.fr/fr/ IMG/pdf/A._Laime.pdf. Jean Lecointe was right when
The great model is Poliziano’s Sylvae, encyclopaedic praelectiones,

inspired by Statius’s own Silvae. Let me add that Textor is closely linked
to Montaigu’s milieu, which explains certain trends in his aesthetic
choices.49 These exercices de style are a pretext to develop topical enumer-
ations and to show the use of the rhetoric of copia. The ubi sunt biblical
theme,50 reminiscent of an allegorical trend well represented in the French
contemporary moralités, is also a pretext to exhibit copia verborum for
the purpose of emulation:
Terra
Ubi pyramides dic improba lena
Barbara quas longo fabricuit tempore Memphis
Artificium multis sudoribus.
Aetas
Omnia finem
Accipiunt.
Terra
Ubi nunc Pharos insula grande sepulchrum
Mausoli et Triuiae moles speciosa Dianae
Dic meretrix.
Aetas
Abiere
Terra
Ubi nunc Tarpeia moles
Centifores Thebae, Babilon circundata muris
Coctilibus, grandis Niniue, sublime theatrum
Caesaris Rhodii simulachrum informe Colossi.
Aetas
Praeuisae superis iam succubuere ruinae.
coining the movement’s name ‘cercle de Montaigu’, but this label should not be consid-
ered exclusive of other influences (colleges of Navarre, Burgundy, Coqueret, Lisieux etc.).
For the collegiate movement in those days, see also P. A. Ford’s unpublished PhD thesis,
‘The College of Burgundy at the Mediaeval University of Paris: History, Topography, and
Chartulary’ (University of Notre-Dame, D.S.M., microfilm Ann Arbor, MI, 1964), and
P. J. J. M. Bakker (ed.), The Collège de Montaigu at the University of Paris: Aspects of
its Institutional and Spiritual History, History of Universities, XXII–2 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008).
49
Cf. note 10.
50
On this topic, see E. Gilson, ‘De la Bible à François Villon’, in Les Idées et les
lettres (Paris: Vrin, 1932), pp. 9-30, and M. E. Quint, The Ubi Sunt: Form, Theme, and
Tradition (Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University, 1981).
Terra
Troia quid est, quid Spartha uetus, quid celsa Corynthus,
Aut eneruati Salomonis nobile templum.
Dic meretrix impura.
Aetas
Suam sensere ruinam.
(Earth
Where are the Pyramids, tell me, oh disloyal procuress,
Pyramids that barbarian Memphis long ago built,
A work produced from much sweat?
Time
All things have an
End.
Earth
Where are now the isle of Pharos,
Mausolus’s great tomb and the rock of Trivian Diana,
Tell me o deceitful harlot?
Time
Gone.
Earth
Where are now Tarpeia’s rocks,
Hundred-gated Thebes, brickwall-surrounded Babylon,
Great Niniva, Cesar’s sublime theatre,
The misshapen Colossus of Rhodes?
Time
They have succumbed to the ruin foreseen by the gods above.
Earth
What of Troy, what of old Sparta, lofty Corynthus,
Or the noble temple of a weakened Solomon,
Tell me oh vile harlot?
Time
They have met their ruin.)
As we can see here, underlying the picture of the Earth’s bitterness, there
is a real catalogue of loci communes, a list of great vanished monuments,
followed by a parade of famous characters or authors (Lucretia, Alex-
ander, Helen, Achilles, Virgil). This kind of enumerative lyricism is based
on the theory of enthusiasm, of calor subitus, a rationalisation of the furor
of ancient poetry. These cornucopiae are the result of the collecting of
standard literary formulas and phrases taken from the great authors of
Antiquity as we can guess by these extracts of the Officina:51

¶ Septem orbis miracula
Septem fuerunt aedificia toto orbe cantatissima, quae propter operis mag-
nitudinem et sumptum incredibilem extitere loco miraculi, ut nihil divinius
ars humana posset confingere aut excogitare. Fuerunt autem haec: pyrami-
des Nili, Turris Pharia, Muri Babylonis, Templum Dianae Ephesiae, Simu
lacrum Mausoli, Colossus Solis apud Rhodios, et Simulacrum Iouis Olym-
pici, quibus nonnulli addunt domum Cyri Medorum Regis.
(¶ The seven wonders of the world
Seven were the buildings most celebrated in the whole world, which be-
cause of their size and incredible sumptuousness, stood out as miracles, so
that human art could not have conceived or imagined anything more divine.
They were the Pyramids of the Nile, the lighthouse of Pharos, the Walls
of Babylon, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, the Shrine of Mausolus, the
Colossus of the Sun in Rhodes, and the Statue of Olympian Jove, to which
a few add the Palace of Cyrus, king of the Medes.)
¶Alia opera et aedificia sumptuosa, et magnifica
Aegyptiae Thebae centum portis nobiles coniecturam mirae amplitudinis
reliquerunt uniuersae posteritati. Iuuenal. Ecce uetus Thebae centum iacet
obruta portis.
Iulius Caesar Circum fecit longitudine trium stadiorum, latitudine unius,
sed cum aedificiis iugerum quaternum, ad sedem CCLX. millium. Idem
solum tantum foro extruendo sestertiis mille ducentis emisse dicitur.
(¶ Other works of art and sumptuous and magnificent buildings
Noble hundred-gated Thebes of Egypt left the idea of its magnitude to pos-
terity. Cf. Juvenal: Here lies desolated Thebes with its hundred doors.
Julius Cesar built a circus, three stadia in length, one in width, of three acres
in all with the buildings, in order to seat 260,000 people. Likewise he is said
to have bought the ground to build his forum for only 1,200 sesterces.)
In the first excerpt, after a brief introduction, Textor details every

monument and provides the necessary data and quotations from ancient
authors. In the second one, we find two other great ancient monuments
that he used in the play Terra.
However, far from consisting of thoughtless rhetoric, Textor’s style is
based on a philological search and he is aware of the importance of propri-
etas verborum, as is evident in the case of the controversial bombarda.
The word is to be found in Textor’s Thersites, a parodic rewriting of the
famous episode of Achilles’ shield (Iliad, XVIII. 478–513):
51
Ravisius Textor, Officina, 2 vols (Lyon: S. Gryphe, 1551), II, 248–55.
Quaeque Carystaeo sit marmore durior, et quae

Intorta nunquam saxorum mole fatiscat
Quam rabidae nequeant dentes penetrare leaenae
Nec quos intorquet bombarda fragosa molares,
Nec quod funda solet Balearis mittere plumbum […]
(Which may be harder than Carystian marble and which
Never may be cracked by a hurled mass of rock,
Which teeth of the fierce lioness may not be able to penetrate
Nor the boulders which roaring cannon hurl
Nor the lead which the Balearic sling is wont to cast […])52
The word bombarda was used by Lorenzo Valla53 in the Elegantiae (II,
34) where he notices that ‘Nuper inventa est machina quam bombardam
vocant’: first employed in Italian texts, nevertheless it entered Latin. Criti-
cised by Bartolomeo Facio for the use of this word, Valla answered him
in the Antidotum in Facium (1, 14, ed. Regoliosi, p. 106):
Usitatum, inquis, maiorum vocabulum fuit ‘tormentum’, quasi de hoc nunc
agatur; at non in hunc accipiebant illi sensum. Posteris, quos iuniores v ocas,
in consuetudinem venit, quasi negem nobis esse utendum; at nova res no-
vum vocabulum flagitat.
(You say that Ancients used the word ‘tormentum’ to refer almost the same
reality as today, but the word was not taken by them with the same meaning.
The followers, that you call youngers, were accustomed to say it, however
I maintain that we do not employ it ; but a new thing needs a new word).
Valla hence accepts the Ciceronian principle ‘nova rebus novis nomina’
(De finibus 3. 1). And then he uses the new word without further explica-
tion, e.g. in his Gesta Ferdinandi Regis Aragonum, 2. 16. 6 (ed. Besomi,
p. 69).
In spite of this authoritative guide, even in the early sixteenth century,
the word was not always accepted among purist Latin writers. Sandra
Provini has shown that two Court poets, writing at the same time about the
wreck of the Regent, the flagship of the French fleet, have different usage in
Latin vocabulary: Humbert de Montmoret, who was closely linked to the
‘circle of Montaigu’, used the word bombarda and other technical neolo-
gisms with no restraint. Germain de Brie, on the other hand, certainly
influenced by his Venitian sojourn where he frequented more cautious
Ravisius Textor, Thersites, l. 28-31, transl. M. Axton, pp. 140–1.

52
All the following data on Valla are due to Prof. Gilbert Tournoy’s erudition. I thank
53
him very much for his precious help.

masters such as Bembo,54 rejected these verba inaudita, choosing to use

elegant periphrases, more appropriate, in his view, to the Virgilian epic
style of his epyllion, and this is one of Thomas More’s complaints in their
famous Homeric quarrel.55 As can be noted, early Renaissance Paris is
once again reminiscent of famous linguistic debates of the Quattrocento.
In the section ‘Machinae quaedam bellicae et tormenta’56 of the Officina,
Textor examines the use of this word, and refers to the contemporary
commentary of Nicolas Bérauld on Poliziano’s Rusticus:57
‘Bombardam Galli uocant machinam a “bombo” et “ardeo”’, ut autumat
noster Nicolaus Beraldus; ‘exsecrabile prorsus inuentum’, quo ‘nihil ful-
mini magis simile, impetu et odore teterrimo’. Cuius inuentoris (ut inquit
ille) ‘robur et aes triplex circa pectus erat’, illum ‘parentis crediderim sui
/ [Fregisse] ceruicem et penetralia / Sparsisse nocturno cruore hospitis’,
etc. Graphicam tormenti huius descriptionem uide apud eumdem Beraldum
in Rusticum Politiani, ex uersibus Ioannis Mariae Catanei.
(‘Frenchmen call this machine bombarde, from “bombus” (rumbling) and
“ardeo” (burn)’, affirms our dear Nicolas Bérauld; ‘a definitely horrible
creation’, ‘nothing sounds more like the thunderbolt, due to its speed and its
deeply disgusting smell’. Its creator (as Bérauld says) ‘had a heart as hard as
oak-wood with a triple wall of bronze around it’, and ‘I think he would have
been able to break his own father’s neck and spatter with nocturnal blood
the innermost part of his host’s dwelling’ etc. See a colourful depiction of
this tool of suffering in the above-mentioned commentary of Poliziano’s
Rusticus by Bérauld, taken from Giovanni Maria Cattaneo’s lines.)
On reading this analysis of Textor’s lexical endeavours, one might ask

the question: how is all this relevant to drama? According to classical
Latin practice, drama was not written in dactylic hexameters.58 The
54
See M.-M. de La Garanderie, ‘Germain de Brie’, Colette Nativel (ed.), Centuriae
latinae: cent une figures humanistes de la Renaissance aux Lumières offertes à Jacques
Chomarat (Geneva: Droz, 1997), pp. 305-310 (305).
55
S. Provini, L’Ecriture épique au début de la Renaissance: Humbert de Montmoret,
Germain de Brie, Pierre Choque: l’incendie de la Cordelière (La Rochelle: Rumeur des
Ages, 2004), pp. 45–6.
56
Ravisius Textor, Officina, ed. cit, I. 337–8.
57
P. Galand, Praelectio et commentaire à la silve Rusticus, §§ 108-109. Bérauld
quotes Cattaneo’s poem ad loc. Textor provided an introductory poem — perhaps his
firstly published text — in Bérauld’s book. For the translation of this poem, see P. Galand-
Hallyn, ‘Nicolas Bérault lecteur de Politien’, in Luisa Secchi Tarugi (ed.), Poliziano nel
suo tempo: atti del VI Convegno internazionale (Chianciano - Montepulciano 18-21
luglio 1994) (Florence, 1996), pp. 411–27 (p. 411).
58
I wish to thank Michiel Verweij for calling my attention to the question of metres in
Latin theatrical compositions during the Symposium.
sophisticated metres of comedies and tragedies were abandoned in Late

Antiquity (Donatus, for example, in the mid-fourth century, thought that
Terence wrote with cadenced prose as Bruno Bureau has established).59
Textor certainly had read Terence in Josse Bade’s edition, in which metres
were not respected. When he composed his dialogi for performance by
his pupils at academic celebrations, he was not aware of the importance
of metrical variety in Latin comedy. His dialogues were only one kind
of texts among other Latin pieces (eulogies, orations…), all written in
hexameters or in elegiac couplets.60
Some critics have argued61 that school drama in those days was basi-
cally ‘two-dimensional’ in the sense that there was no acting per se other
than declamation.62 I will not be so categorical about Textor’s Dialogi, and
some clues about staging are to be found in certain plays.63 We must be
cautious and not compare this type of drama with what we know about
the school theatre of the Jesuits in the seventeenth century. Before accu-
mulating more data about acting — in the modern sense of the word —
I prefer to emphasise the notion of actio, a complex set of sterotyped
gestures recommanded by Cicero and especially by Quintilian in order to
emphasise and accompany the speeches of the orator. The common use
of actio, both in classroom recitations and on academic occasions, and
the erudite turn of these texts, restrict the definition of Textor’s plays as
drama, as Peter Burke once pointed out in a valuable paper about Renais-
sance dialogues:
It is hard to decide where dialogue ends and comedy begins. Indeed, the
allegorical dialogues of the French professor of rhetoric Jean Textier [sic],
better known as Ravisius Textor, featuring characters such as ‘natura’,
‘mors’ and ‘bonum commune’, bear a strong resemblance to the vernacular
soties of his contemporary the poet Pierre Gringoire.64
59
B. Bureau and L. Schebat, ‘Térence, Donat, Bade’, Camenae 8 (2011).
60
Cf. Guillaume Houvet’s eulogies of great cities: Houueti Carnotensis Oratio habita
in exordio operis Philelphici De educatione liberorum (Paris: Jean de Gourmont, s.d.
[circa 1507]). Note that in Textor’s Ecclesia, we find ten stanzas in hymnic verses. cf.
Vodoz, Le Théâtre latin, p. 56.
61
M. Ferrand, ‘Le Théâtre des collèges’, p. 352 has called such an argument in
question.
62
See Vodoz, Le Théâtre latin, pp. 49-50.
63
See Textor’s Prodigal Son.
64
Peter Burke, ‘The Renaissance dialogue’, Renaissance Studies, 3 (1989), 1-12. See
also Peter Mack, ‘The Dialogue in English education of the Sixteenth Century’, in M. T.
Jones-Davies (ed.), Le Dialogue au temps de la Renaissance (Paris: Jean Touzot, 1984),
189–212.
Very often Textor’s characters are archetypal entities deprived of indi-

vidual features and there is no care about dramatic effects. We are here
clearly before Erasmus’s decorum peculiare, a valuable hallmark of
Renaissance drama according to Jean Lecointe.65 The hero is always a
stock character, a kind of elaborate personalised formula.
Most of Textor’s plays are simply a medley of contemporaneous French
drama66 and Terentian comedy (this appears in the use of stichomythic
and incisive answers, ‘interjections’, and rapid style). But where Textor
departs definitely from what we call theatre is his use of topics from epic
style, not very different from what we can otherwise find in school rhetor-
ical poetry of his time. This approach, by no means rare in these circles,
is what I would coin as ‘neutralisation générique’,67 viz. the re-use of some
narrative or descriptive pieces, whatever their generic origins. This does
not mean that these Humanists were not aware of generic distinctions.68
Obviously, Textor does not want to write an epic poem, but he reinvests
some epic elements, such as ecphrases and other highly epideictic panni.
Textor does not hesitate to write theatrical dialogues in hexameters: he
polishes purple patches characterised by enargeia69 and pathetic effects.
Seneca had already been published in Paris, but Textor hardly uses
Senecan tragedies. The main dramatic effects that we find in his texts are
drawn from Virgil, Lucan, and Statius. In these authors, Textor encoun-
ters commonplace pictures which enable him to develop pathetic expres-
sion, as explained at length in Macrobius’s book IV of the Saturnalia
(especially in 2, 9-10)70 which he might have read. Indeed, in most of the
dialogi we see this kind of juxtaposition of autonomous pictures, a trend
inherited from Late Antiquity.
65
J. Lecointe, L’Idéal et la différence, pp. 430-435; Id., ‘Les quatre Apostoles: échos
de la poétique érasmienne chez Rabelais et Dürer’, Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la
France, 95 (1995), 887-905.
66
Cf. Cougny, Etudes historiques and Massebieau, De Ravisii Textoris comoediis.
67
See my forthcoming paper, ‘L’Epique à l’épreuve de la confusion générique: décon-
textualisation et réemploi de stylèmes épiques au début du XVIe siècle’, in L’Hybridité
épique: Actes de la journée d’étude du 2 février 2008 à l’Université Paris IV-Sorbonne,
éd. O. Pédeflous sous la direction de J. Dangel et M. Huchon (Paris: PUPS, 2013) (forth-
coming).
68
See the subtle associations described in Sandra Provini, L’Ecriture épique.
69
Cf. P. Galand-Hallyn, Les Yeux de l’éloquence: poétiques humanistes de l’évidence
(Orléans: Paradigme, 1995), 2nd part, ch. 1 and 2.
70
See N. Marinone, ‘Pathos virgiliano e retorica in Macrobio’, Atti dell’Academia
delle Scienze di Torino, 113 (1969), 219–43. For a contemporary use of Macrobius in the
same way by François Dubois, see J. Lecointe, La Poetica, vol. Biographie, pp. 84–5.
Speaking from the literary point of view, Textor finds himself at the end
of a long chain of poets and literati, who had been emulating their prede-
cessors from Hellenistic times; we can say that in his own way he recapi-
tulates a tradition of more than eighteen centuries, but, of course, having
no direct data about the Alexandrians, he relied mostly on the ‘recapitula-
tory’ poets of Late Antiquity.71 These poets (Ausonius, Claudian, Sidonius
Apollinaris) were mostly interested in the composition of eulogies and
panegyrics; for them, Augustan and mid-Empire poets were, above all,
an inexhaustible source of aesthetic depictions and formulae, generally
removed from any other sociological, historical, or cultural considerati-
ons.72 These features are over-represented in Textor’s elaborate prologues
opening his plays, especially in the dialogue Calliopes where the epony-
mous character can be considered a prothetic figure. This corresponds
to the rhetoricisation of epics, inherited from such Silver Age writers as
Lucan and Statius, a development achieved by Claudian and others in the
late fourth century.73
Finally, I have added a last extract to show the influence of Textor’s

thought, and to give an idea of the close relationships linking Textor’s
plays with the academic poetry of the same period. This is an introduc-
tory poem addressed to a professor of the University of Paris, Oronce
Finé by the so-called Jean Des Fosses from Mâcon, who studied at the
Collège de Montaigu.74 The poem below is representative of the use of
71
Textor had almost no knowledge of Greek language and literature.
72
See M. Roberts, The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity (London
and Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989). For this, see P. Galand-Hallyn, ‘Sidoine
Apollinaire ou l’énargie du désespoir: aspects d’une métapoétique à la lumière de ses
lecteurs humanistes’, in V. Zarini and P. Galand-Hallyn (eds), Manifestes littéraires dans
la latinité tardive: poétique et rhétorique. Actes du colloque international de Paris,
23-24 mars 2007 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2009), pp. 297-324.
73
E. R. Curtius, Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern: A. Francke
A G Verlag, 1949), and more detailed studies by G. Braden, ‘Claudian and His Influence:
The Realm of Venus’, Arethusa, 12 (1979), 203–31, and J.-L. Charlet, ‘Aesthetic Trends in
Late Latin Poetry’, Philologus, 132 (1988), 74-85.
74
Liminary poem published in Robert Goulet, Compendium recenter editum de multi-
plici parisiensis vniuersitatis magnificentia, dignitate et excellentia […] (Paris: Toussaint
Denis, 1517), f. aaiv [Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de la Sorbonne, R XVI 946]. This
poem is not reproduced in the edition of the treatise with an English translation by R.
Belle Burke, Compendium on the Magnificence, Dignity, Excellence of the University of
Paris in the Year of Grace 1517 (Philadelphia, PA, 1928). For Jean Des Fosses’s Parisian
period, see A. Laimé, ‘Présentation, traduction et annotation des Sylvae de Nicolas Petit
(1522)’ (mémoire de DEA, Université de Paris-IV, 2004, supervised by P. Galand-Hallyn),
introduction; for his law studies in Toulouse, see A. Claudin, ‘Un écrivain saintongeais
inconnu: Mathurin Alamande, poète et littérateur de St-Jean-d’Angély’, Bulletin de la
Société des Archives Historiques de la Saintonge et de l’Aunis, 15 (1895), 189-203.
numerous toponyms from Antiquity with their stereotyped locations (we

can surmise, indeed, that in the mind of the writer there was no actual
connection with any of these places):75
Ex collegio Sancti Michaelis Cenacensi, Joannis Fosserii Matiscensis ad
magistrum Orontium Fine Delphinatem astronomum ac medicum, enco-
mium urbis
Alta Colossei ceciderunt pegmata Caris,
Pyramides Phariae [sic] Dardana Troia fuit.
Roma tacet, miracla ruunt, perit obruta Thebae,
Threiciam iam linquunt Delphica templa Samon,
Carthago, Solimaeque iacent, Germanica sala, 5
Susaque Cressa nobiliora domo.
Europaeque urbes et quas Asiatica tellus
Fulcit, et occiduis Africa iuncta locis.
Cuncta solo prostrata iacent, uel moenia late
Semiruta extremo contemerata situ. 10
Solus adhuc superat franco selectus honori
Clarus, inexhaustus, Parisiensis honos.
Parisii superant urbs aurea fortis Athenae,
Regis Phoebaei ianua prima laris.
Dives, opima, sagax, non illaudata, modesta, 15
Facunda, insignis, religiosa potens.
Digna quidem laudis, Smirneum inuenit Homerum
Qui caneret laxo munera tanta pede.
Cleopolinque76 dedit Patauino lacte refusam
Neustriacae Goulet77 gloria rara plagae. 20
Ergo decus nostrum propera festinus Oronti
Et studia hic mecum Parisiana uide.
(From the Collège de St Michel (Chenac), Jean Des Fosses of Mâcon. Prai-
se of the city [of Paris] for Professor Oronce Finé Dauphinois, astronomer
and doctor.
The high machines of the Carian Colosseum have fallen,
The Pyramids, Pharos, and Dardanus’s Troy are no more.
Rome is silent, its miracles are falling into ruins, Thebes has perished.
The temples of Apollo vanish in the Thracian isle of Samos,
Carthage, Jerusalem are destroyed and German palaces, 5
See in the same period the enormous errors about Greek toponyms made by Pierre
75
Danès in a lecture commented on by O. Reverdin, Les Premiers Cours de grec au Collège

de France ou l’enseignement de Pierre Danès d’après un document inédit (Paris: PUF,
1984), p. 28. We have used classical orthography for the toponyms.
76
Allusion to Quintianus Stoa’s Cleopolis silva, praising Paris, printed at Paris by
Jean de Gourmont, 1514.
77
This is a reference to Robert Gou(l)let, from Coutances in Normandy. See M. Reulos,
‘Un Normand, professeur à l’université de Paris et fondateur du collège d’Avranches,
Robert Goulet’, Cahiers Léopold Delisle, 17, fasc. 3-4 (1968), p.19.
Which were nobler than the houses of Susa and Crete;

The cities of Europe, and those that the land of Asia bears,
And Africa joined to western places.
All lie destroyed on the ground, with half-ruined walls
Or sacred places soiled. 10
Alone remains the honour of Paris,
Chosen by the Frankish nobility, bright, and whole.
Paris, the golden city of mighty Athena, prevails,
And the first house of the royal Lares of Phoebus.
Rich, opulent, shrewd, admired, humble, 15
Eloquent, famous, strong in faith.
Worthy of praise, it found Homer of Smyrna
Who would sing such a gift with a supple rhythm.
And it gave the Cleopolis poem bred in Paduan milk,
And Goulet, rare glory of the Neustry. 20
So, our honour, Orontius, hasten,
And see here with me these Parisian studies.)
The young poet has used all the commonplace examples of great ancient
monuments in a powerful synkrisis, which ends, not surprisingly, with
the triumph of Paris, which has received the fruits of the translatio studii.
***
To conclude briefly, I will just say that Textor’s Dialogi are clearly
examples of rhetorical drama, full of reminiscences of classical refer-
ences mediated by a reading of florid poetry and the Italian lexicography
of the Quattrocento.78 Textor’s plays are at the crossing point of rhetorical
dialogues, brief epic poems and contemporary French drama. His Dialogi
perfectly exemplify what Jean Lecointe called the ‘Age of Abundance’,
ending in the 1530s with the imposition of new shorter forms and with the
emergence of other pedagogic methods, supplanting the great movement
of Italian poetic philology.79
E-mail: opedeflous@gmail.com
78
For the debt of French Humanists to Italian lexicography in Early Renaissance
Paris, see J.-C. Margolin, ‘La fonction pragmatique et l’influence culturelle de la Cornu-
copiae de N. Perotti’, Res publica litterarum, 4 (1981), 123-171, and L.-A. Sanchi, ‘Guil-
laume Budé et ses devanciers italiens: à propos des Commentaires de la langue grecque’,
BHR, 65 (2003), 641–53.
79
See A. Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship,
(New York and Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), chapters 2–3; Lecointe, ‘Nicolas Petit,
Bouchet, Rabelais’, pp. 185-87.
Carine Ferradou
George Buchanan’s Sacred Latin Tragedies
Baptistes and Iephthes:
What Place for Humankind in the Universe?
During the years 1540 to 1543, when George Buchanan was a Latin teacher
in Bordeaux, the Collège de Guyenne asked him to create plays for his
pupils, and he wrote two tragedies, Baptistes siue Calumnia, published
in London only in 1577, and dedicated to his young royal pupil, James
VI, and also Iephthes siue Votum, published in Paris in 1554. Michel de
Montaigne in his Essais1 wrote proudly that when he was young he acted
in his Scottish master’s original dramas, but also in his Latin translations
of Euripides’ Alcestis and Medea, probably on a stage made in the college
quadrangle during the celebrations of the end of the school year.
From a literary point of view, Buchanan’s dramaturgy, evolving from
Baptistes to Iephthes, is, so to speak, at the meeting point of ancient
aesthetics, European classical dramatic genre, and medieval drama as
well. From a pedagogical point of view, sixteenth-century colleges consi-
dered drama as a good didactic entertainment, as regards the learning of
an ancient language and more generally of rhetoric, but also the develop-
ment of memory and of a good actio. Moreover, its moral impact justified
biblical subjects such as the beheading of John the Baptist, reported in the
Gospels, and the sacrifice of Jephtha’s daughter, named Iphis by Buchanan
though she has no name in the Book of Judges. Similarly, medieval plays
often dramatised religious subjects. On the other hand, the main goal of
school drama was to edify distinguished young men so that they could
become accomplished adults.
Both plays converge on great sacred subjects:2 obedience to God’s
commandments, free will, or vows. All of them, which imply the rela-
tionship between mankind and its Creator, were much debated in the
1
See Montaigne, Les Essais, ed. Jean Balsamo, Michel Magnien, Catherine Magnien-
Simonin (Paris: Gallimard, 2007), I. 25, p. 184): ‘[…] j’ay soustenu les premiers person-
nages ès tragedies latines de Bucanan, de Guerente, et de Muret, qui se representerent en
nostre college de Guienne avec dignité.’ He speaks at least five times about Buchanan and
cites two of his verses throughout the Essais.
2
See the summaries of both plays in the Appendix. All the following quotations and
their translations are taken from P. Sharratt and P. G. Walsh’s edition and English transla-
tion of Buchanan’s tragedies (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1983).
42 Carine Ferradou
sixteenth century, in particular between Catholics and Protestants, and

each of them is part of a much more important question which has poli-
tical, moral, and spiritual outcomes: what is the place of humankind in
the universe?
It is interesting to study how Buchanan, as a teacher, a scholar, and a
humanist, set out in his plays his own definition of human responsibility.
That is why I will first deal with the dramatisation of contradiction, which
brings out both the difficulty of communication between human beings
and the quest for truth; then with some elements of traditional ethics (both
pagan and Christian); and I will conclude with the answer to the universal
question I have just raised.
The Dramatisation of Contradiction

The pedagogical dimension of Buchanan’s tragedies plays an essential
role from a stylistic point of view, because their Latin verses, written in
a poetic and lofty tone, contribute to elaborate a language which suits
the expression of Humanism perfectly. Since this language is based on
the principle of aemulatio, the reminiscences of many Greek and Latin
masterpieces of poetry and theatre are obvious throughout Buchanan’s
dramas.
From the Greek tragic poets and Seneca, who scattered their plays with
sententiae and moral speeches, to Horace and the Latin grammarians,
much emphasis has been laid on the ethical aim of tragedy. That is why
the Ancients, inspired by ‘deliberative rhetoric’, developed in their trage-
dies so many scenes of agon, these famous verbal contests. Similarly,
Buchanan, when dealing with imprudent vows and the use of violence by
powerful people, drew his inspiration from the large range of traditional
controversial subjects, and showed in his plays how to argue objectively,
pro and contra, on political or religious issues.
As the themes of Buchanan’s tragedies were somewhat topical in the
sixteenth century,3 giving a clear indication of his own opinion about
them could be very dangerous. In order to avoid problems with censor-
ship, he chose to dramatise his thoughts: within the tragic plot, the author
can hide his views behind the voices of many characters, who often adopt
conflicting points of view.
In the first scene of Baptistes, an agon takes place between two Rabbis,
Gamaliel and Malchus. Their replies seem to be pleas for and against
3
This is probably one of the reasons why both tragedies were so successful in the
sixteenth century.
George Buchanan’s Sacred Latin Tragedies 43
John the Baptist, their dialogue, with antithetical sentences and short
lines, sometimes completely symmetrical,4 is representative of the whole
tragedy: every episode is more or less based on the opposition of two
characters.5
In these ‘agones’, rhetoric and what I call ‘authoritative speeches’
(which are somewhat similar to maxims or proverbs6) used by both adver-
4
See for example Baptistes, ll. 124–29:
GAMALIEL. Qui uitia carpit, qui docet mores bonos,
Praeitque primus quam indicat aliis uiam,
Hunc esse mihi persuadeas malum uirum?
MALCHUS. Qui iura spernit, qui docet sectas nouas
Nouosque ritus, qui petit conuiciis
Populi magistros, pontificibus detrahit,
Hunc esse mihi persuadeas bonum uirum?
(GAMALIEL. Can you persuade me that the man who rebukes vices, teaches good
manners, and walks first on the path which he enjoins on others is wicked?
MALCHUS. Can you persuade me that the man who despises laws, promotes new
sects and new rites, attacks with abuse the teachers of the people, and disparages
the priests is good?)
5
In the sixth episode, the opposition is softer than in the other scenes, because the
Chorus of the Jews and John the Baptist share the same faith in God, but the former is
less mystical than the latter. For example, the Jews have different feelings about death
from those of the prophet (they are frightened when he is steadfast, and even happy). In
the last episode, when the Messenger condemns the Chorus for their tears on learning
that John has been beheaded (ll. 1331–46), he agrees with the metaphysical conception
of the prophet.
6
e.g. Baptistes, scene 2, ll. 367–75:
HERODES Condicio regum misera, si miseros timet.
REGINA Si nil timendo praeda fit, miserrima.
HER. Quid ergo tutum iam supererit regibus?
REG. Omnia, quieti si quod obstat auferant.
HER. Nempe hoc tyrannus interest regi bono;
Hic seruat hostes, hostis ille ciuium est.
REG. Vtrumque durum est, et perire et perdere;
Sed si eligendum est, praestat hostem perdere.
HER. Cum non necesse est alterum, utrumque miserum est.
(HEROD. The condition of kings is wretched if it fears the wretched. QUEEN. It be-
comes more wretched if it is plundered through fearing nothing. HER. In that case,
what safety will now remain for kings? QUEEN. All will be safe if they silently
remove what impedes them. HER. Surely this is the difference between the tyrant
and the good king, that the king keeps watch on enemies, whereas the tyrant is the
enemy of the citizens. QUEEN. Both dying and destroying are grim experiences, but
if a choice must be made it is better to destroy the enemy. HER. When one is un-
necessary, both courses are wretched.)
44 Carine Ferradou
saries throw light on the fruitless competition between opposite ideo-

logical systems: neither of them turns out to be more relevant or more
truthful than the other. Every oratorical contest ends in the departure of
one character, not in a clear verbal victory. This may mean that nobody
knows the entire truth, and the consequence is a tragic incommunicability,
because neither of the speakers wants to acknowledge his weakness. In
this tragic framework, since efficacious and satisfying exchange between
two individuals is impossible, human beings are doomed to confusion,
violence, and loneliness.
In Iephthes, the triple confrontation between Jephtha and his friend
Symmachus, then with the Priest who has to sacrifice Jephtha’s daughter,
and finally with his wife, Storge (a Greek name meaning maternal affec-
tion), presents the dramatisation of three converging points of view about
a difficult issue (has somebody the right to kill his child?), as in a judicial
inquiry: reason, official institutions, and feelings. All the speakers’ argu-
ments complement one another, in the aim of dissuading Jephtha from
committing a crime. These dialogues are useless, for Jephtha never
changes his mind, and Iphis will be sacrificed. It does not mean that
Jephtha is right, because the Angel at the beginning of the tragedy, the
Chorus, and all the characters think the contrary, but only that he is more
obstinate than the others… Because of the lack of divine intervention
before the sacrifice, unlike in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis for example,
it is impossible to know if Jephtha is pious and wise or mad and criminal.
The truth remains obscure. The Chorus of the Jewish girls finds some
comfort in the heroism of their friend Iphis,7 but this does not provide
7
Iephthes, ll. 1331–49:
Laus feminei famaque sexus
Et generosae gloria stirpis,
Animi nimium uirgo uirilis,
Licet iniuria tibi fatorum
Vtiliores abscidit annos,
Licet immanis feritas Parcae
Teneri florem carpserit aeui,
Quod tibi uitae fors detraxit
Fama adiciet postuma laudi.
Et qua primis Phoebus ab Indis
Rutilae tollit lumina flammae,
Te posteritas sera loquetur.
Te qui primi flumina Nili
Bibit, et curru qui Sarmatico
Solidum non timet ire per Istrum,
Concinet olim
solace to her mother: her last word (the last one of the tragedy), dolor,8
shows that she still considers her daughter’s murder as a mere crime and
a foolish act.
In both Buchanan’s plays, the absence of a clear victory of one speaker
in the discussions stresses the ambiguousness of truth. Every character
thinks he knows it, but he understands only one of its aspects, which turns
out to be as valid as any other. There is not one, simple and universal truth.
One may say that, far from glorifying the power of eloquence, Buchanan’s
dramatisation of rhetoric makes obvious the failure of persuasion.
Timothy Reiss went further when he interpreted9 these sacred tragedies
as two attempts to denounce the failure of language in general. According
to Reiss, the themes of the imprudent promise in Baptistes and of the rash
vow in Iephthes imply two forms of a restricting word, which prevents
any progress of the action, and leads to the death of all the people whose
speech cannot be as efficient for their own defence.
Buchanan’s tragedies, somewhat in the same way as Montaigne’s philo-
sophy, would have shown the impossibility of speaking about oneself with
the words of others without losing one’s authenticity, and of expressing
one’s own truth while trying to communicate deeply with other indivi-
duals without losing the right of existing. This tragic situation emphasises
how absurd and fragile the human condition is.
Non formidine mortis inerti

Pauidam, patriae donasse alacrem
Natura tibi quos dedit annos.
(Praise and glory of the female sex, splendour of your noble race, maiden with a
spirit truly manly, though the injustice of the fate has deprived you of your more ser-
viceable years, and though the monstrous savagery of Fortune has plucked the blos-
som of your youthful life, your renown after death will add to your glory that por-
tion of life of which chance has deprived you. Where Phoebus among the furthest
Indians raises the light of his ruddy fire, generations late-born will tell of you. He
who drinks the waters of the furthest Nile, and he who does not fear to ride over the
ice-bound Danube in his Sarmatian chariot will at some distant time sing how you,
deterred by no sluggish fear of death, readily offered for your native land the years
which nature bestowed on you.)
8
Iephthes, ll. 1449–50: ‘Quo fortiore nata tulit animo necem, / Hoc angit animum
tristior meum dolor’ (The braver the spirit with which my daughter bore her death, the
sorer the anguish which gnaws my heart).
9
T. J. Reiss, ‘Vers un système de la tragédie renaissante: Buchanan, Montaigne, et la
difficulté de s’exprimer’, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 4 (1977), 133–78.
This paper was translated into English and completed in T. J. Reiss’s book, Tragedy and
Truth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 40–77, chap. 2: ‘Buchanan, Mont-
aigne, and the Difficulty of Speaking’.
46 Carine Ferradou
This modern interpretation focuses on verbal violence in human rela-

tionships, whereas more classical references, which inspired Buchanan,
insist on other forms of moral failure.
Some Elements of Traditional Ethics
Elements of pagan ethics

The main thoughts of both Choruses had already been expressed by their
Greek and Latin predecessors. An exhaustive account would be tedious,
but one can find the usual speeches about changes of fortune, the dream of
a simple, virtuous, and quiet life;10 they also praise moderation, prudence,
humility, they consider the mistakes of the characters as examples of the
blindness of mankind,11 and they remind us of the hidden agonies of a
10
E.g. lines 310–12 in Baptistes (first chorus: ‘Te fides, et quae melioris aeui / Hospes
infames uitiis reliquit / Vltima terras’, (you faith too, and that virtue which was the guest
of a better age, and was last to abandon our notorious lands of vice) allude to the topos
of the Golden Age as depicted by Hesiod, and to the flight of the goddess Justice, who
returned to the heavens after all the other divinities).
11
E.g. Iephthes, ll. 1063–64: ‘Heu, numquam homini sat compertum / Quid petat aut
quid uitet in horas’ (Alas, man can never properly establish what he is to seek or what to
avoid at each hour!) and ll. 1075–1107:
Nempe erroris nebula et taetris
Ignorantia saepta tenebris
Sic humanas sepelit mentes,
Nec perspicuis animi quisquam
Oculis radios cernere potis est
Veri simplicis, aut uirtutis
Nudae rectum insistere callem.
Sed ueluti sub luce maligna
Per secretos nemorum anfractus
Lubricus error mille uiarum
Dubio occursu ludit euntes,
Inter uarios semita flexus
Nulla placet neque displicet ulla;
Sic iter homines praeterpropter
Dubia incerti mente uagamur.
Hic uenalem funere laurum
Otii impatiens dum sibi quaerit,
Luctu alieno dura per arma
Redimit uanae murmura famae.
Captatores alius captans
Dulci steriles pignore lectos
Multa pensat plebe clientum,
Atque intenta fraude uicissim
Coruos ludere gaudet hiantes.
Cunarum alter murmura blanda,
guilty conscience,12 so that evil individuals find no place in this world for
peace and happiness.
The first chorus of Baptistes reveals the innumerable vices and weak-
nesses of the human hearts and minds,13 and the fifth chorus of Iephthes
Tenero et balbas ore querelas

Non mutauerit opibus Croesi,
Aut quas diuite lucidus unda
Rutilas Hermus uoluit arenas.
Verum nemo tam sapienter
Vitam instituit, consilium ut non
Damnet decies ipse suum una
Forsitan hora.
(Assuredly the mist of error, and ignorance shrouded in foul darkness so bury the
minds of men that none can descry the rays of unvarnished truth with the clear
eyes of the mind, nor tread upon the right path of virtue unadorned. It is like being
in malevolent light, where through remote windings of woodland hazardous error
makes sport of travellers as in doubtful mind they encounter a thousand tracks; amid
diverse turnings no path is approved, and none rejected. We mortals are similar, as
in uncertainty and with hesitant mind we wander in the vicinity of our path. One
man who cannot abide leisure seeks for himself the laurel purchaseable by death,
and with grim arms at the cost of another’s grief wins whispers of empty fame.
Another seeks to trick legacy-hunters, and compensates for a bed barren of sweet
offspring with an abundant crowd of dependants; devising deceit in his turn, he
rejoices to make sport of the crows with parted beaks. A third would not change the
charming murmurs from the cradle and the lisping plaints from an infant’s mouth
for the wealth of Croesus, or for the ruddy sands which Hermus, gleaming with rich
waters, rolls along. But no man orders his life so sagely that he does not condemn
his own plan ten times over, perhaps in a single hour.)
12
E.g. Baptistes, ll. 855–62, inspired by Juvenal, Satire 13, ll. 192 sqq., about crimi-
nals, hypocrites, and also greedy people: ‘Vos clausus intra uiscera / Occultus exest
carnifex, / Duro flagellans uerbere. / O ter beatum et amplius / Qui purus animi ad iudices
/ Non fit reus domesticos, / Clauso nec in praecordiis / Tortore semper uapulat!’ (The
hidden executioner enclosed within your entrails devours you, scourging you with his
grim whip. Thrice blessed and more is the man chaste of mind who does not become the
accused before the judges of his own house, and is not continually flogged in his heart by
the torturer enclosed there!)
13
E.g. Baptistes, ll. 281–322:
Quanta mortales latebris opacis
Nox tegit mentes! quibus in tenebris
Degimus lapsu celeri fugacis
Tempora uitae!
Occulit falsus pudor impudentem,
Impium celat pietatis umbra,
Turbidi uultu simulant quieta,
Vera dolosi.
Qui fuit tristi grauitate uultus,
Vnicum uitae specimen modestae,
Aestuat praeceps furiis et atrox
48 Carine Ferradou
evokes the intellectual and moral aberrations of mortals (in Latin,

errores)14 who, because of their lack of wisdom, look for an illusive happi-
ness. Both choruses are reminiscent of the disenchanted or indignant
poems of Horace, Juvenal, and Martial, who humorously depicted their
contemporaries’ foolish behaviour. For example, the Chorus of Iephthes
describes, in an excerpt which has no solid connection with the tragic
Feruet in iras.
[…]
Tu mali tanti genetrix, cupido
Gloriae uano tumefacta fastu,
Lausque fucati specie superne
Splendida honesti,
Mentis ut regnum semel occupasti,
Fascinas blandis animos uenenis,
Et relegata ratione turbas
Pectoris aulam.
[…]
Si quis o, frontis nebulis remotis,
Artifex nudas daret intueri
Pectoris curas, penitus reuellans
Abditae caecum penetrale mentis,
Cerneres miris uariata formis
Monstra non magno stabulare in antro
Plura quam terris ferat in remotis
Nilus et Ganges, Libyeque saeuis
Feta portentis, latebrisque nigris
Caucasus horrens.
(How deep a blackness shrouds the minds of men in their shadowy hiding-places! In
what darkness do we pass the period of our lives which speed away in swift flight!
An assumed modesty cloaks the shameless; the cover of piety conceals the impious.
On their faces men who are disturbed feign tranquillity, and deceivers feign truth-
fulness. The person who shows stern seriousness of countenance, and is a model
unparalleled for moderate life, seethes and is driven headlong by madness, and bla-
zes fiercely into anger. […] You bring to birth such evil, O desire for glory swollen
with empty pride, and you, praise accorded to honour with your veneer of gleaming
outward show. When once you have seized the kingdom of the mind, you bewitch
men’s spirits with alluring poison, and by exiling reason you throw into confusion
the temple of the heart. […] O, if only some contriver could remove the clouds of
man’s countenance, and permit us to gaze on the naked cares of the heart, exposing
the dark sanctum of the mind hidden deep within, then you would see dwelling in
that tiny cavern monsters of varied and wondrous shapes, greater in number than
those which Nile and Ganges breed in distant lands, and Africa teeming with savage
prodigies, and the Caucasus bristling with dark lurking-places.)
14
See the comparison between the human condition and a walk on many paths in a
dark forest in the verses 1082-1087 of Iephthes (quoted supra). Both meanings of the word
‘error’ are here explicitly associated.
plot15 but which is naturally written in a serious tone, three real cases as
well as fictional ones: the warrior enamoured with glory, the lonely man
who looks for an heir, as in Petronius’s Satiricon,16 the father who deems
his numerous descendants to be his greatest riches.
So when the choruses’ comment on the tragic plot becomes general,
they express spontaneously the topoi of ancient philosophy and ethics, as
in a great number of Neo-Latin and vernacular tragedies in the sixteenth
century, because one function of the chorus is to stress the tragic dimen-
sion of human life.
That is why the Chorus of Iephthes says that every human being resem-
bles Jephtha: everybody believes that he can reach happiness by his or
her own means although nobody understands the laws that rule over our
destinies and the future remains unknown. At the very moment when
men and women try to control their lives, invisible forces — Fortune,
chance or God — deprive them of any power, and remind them roughly
of their wretched condition. Obviously, they cannot be the masters of the
universe…
On the other hand, Iphis and John the Baptist show that only the
acceptation of the external events that constitute our fates gives a kind
of serenity and puts an end to the tragic chain of existence. Their beha-
viour has affinities with the stoic philosophy, but mostly, both characters
embody Christian wisdom, since they can be interpreted as forerunners
of the martyrs and the saints.
The Stamp of Christian Ethics

John and Iphis are models for Buchanan’s noble and learned pupils, who
are destined for a brilliant future. Both represent the highest level of
innocence and innate purity: the prophet is described by Gamaliel, the
Chorus, and Herod as a sanctus17 ascetic who lives amidst nature; the girl
herself makes a point in saying she is innocent.18 Then Symmachus, her
father’s friend, is thinking of her when he states that a pure heart always
prevails in God’s eyes.19 Their virtue and humility are perfect.
15
Iephthes, v. 1090-1103 (quoted supra).
16
See Satiricon, ch. 116ff.
17
See Baptistes, ll. 210, 212, 275, 1000.
18
Iephthes, ll. 567–8 (when she sees her father’s sudden sadness, she wonders what
evil she can have done towards him, but she thinks she is not guilty): ‘…remedium id
arbitror tutissimum / Intaminata conscientia frui.’
19
Iephthes, l. 573: ‘Illoque [= Deo] uincit purus animus iudice’ (… the safest remedy,
I think, is enjoyment of an unspotted conscience).
50 Carine Ferradou
In the sixteenth century, beyond the bloody conflicts between Catho-

lics and Protestants, and the issue of religious propaganda, every spec-
tator could admire Iphis and John’s deep and sincere faith, which leads
them to die for their God’s sake, and to consider their fate as a good turn
of events, since John the Baptist is eager to join his divine Father20 and
Iphis, while dying, obtains her father and her people’s final deliverance.21
20
Baptistes, ll. 1071–86:
Laetus ergo tramite
Decurso ad ipsam stare metam me puto.
Iam prope peractae liber e uitae freto
Prospicio terram. De peregrino solo
Domum reuertor, optimum primum patrem
Visurus, illum nempe patrem qui solum
Reuinxit undis, induit caelum solo,
Regitque certas mobilis caeli uices;
Seruator auctor rector unus omnium,
Cui cuncta uiuunt uiua iuxta ac mortua.
Vt flamma sursum sponte uoluit uortices,
Vndae deorsum perpeti lapsu ruunt,
Propriumque pergunt ire cuncta ad fomitem,
Iamdudum anhelat spiritus caelo editus
Rerum ad parentem lucis aeternae incolam,
Quem contueri est uita, mors non cernere.
(So I am joyful to think that I have run the course and am poised at the post. Now
liberated from the straits of a life almost completed, I gaze upon land. I am retur-
ning home from foreign soil to behold for the first time the best of fathers. He is the
father who separated the land from the waters, who clothed the land with sky, who
governs the fixed changes of the moving heavens. He is the sole preserver, author,
ruler of all things, for whom all things living and dead alike are alive. As a flame of
its own accord rolls upward its coils, as waters rush downwards with perpetual flow,
as all things proceed to their own nourishment, so my spirit sprung from heaven has
for long been panting for the father of the world who dwells in eternal light; for to
gaze on him is life, and not to see him is death.)
21
See her last prayer, as reported by the Messenger, in the last scene, ll. 1413–27:
Aeterne rerum genitor atque hominum parens,
Tandem propitius gentis errori tuae
Ignosce, et istam uictimam lenis cape.
Quod si furoris exigis piaculum,
Quaecumque nostra contumax superbia
Supplicia meruit, te parentem deserens,
Vtinam luatur hoc cruore. Saepius
Vtinam liceret sanguinem profundere et,
Hic si parentum et ciuium sita est salus,
In me furoris impetum ac irae tuae
Per mille mortes saepius deflectere.
At tu, sacerdos, quid metuis?’ Etenim metu
Gelido tremebat. ‘Ades, et hanc luce exime
Both turn what the common run of people would deem to be a failure into
a success from a spiritual point of view, in accordance with the biblical
assertion that divine wisdom differs from human wisdom.22
Besides, Iphis’ and John’s contempt for death shows how to behave
heroically in whatever circumstances. The steadfastness of the prophet
and the girl is conjured up in Baptistes, by the comparisons between
John’s unwaveringness and the ilex battered by the winds or the rock
struck by waves,23 and in Iephthes by the description of Iphis’ quiet and
resolute bearing before her death.24 Physical suffering does not matter to
them, because they mainly think of the consequences of the fleeting and
unavoidable moment of death.
In fact, John does not take care of his body, which he pejoratively
calls a corpusculum,25 and he explains to the Chorus that the endless
Animam; morantem solue corporis obicem.

Populum parentem meque uoto libera.
(Eternal Begetter of the universe, Father of men, now finally show mercy and par-
don to the sin of your race, and receive this victim with gentle heart. But if you
demand expiation of our madness, whatever the punishment our stubborn arrogance
has deserved in abandoning you our Father, may this blood atone for it. I wish that
I could shed this blood more often, and if the salvation of my parents and fellow-
citizens lies in me, I wish that I could turn the force of your fury and anger repea-
tedly on myself with a thousand deaths. But why, priest, do you tremble?’ For he
with cold fear was shivering. ‘Draw near, and remove this life of mine from the light
of day; loose the hindering barrier of my body. Discharge from the vow the people,
my father and myself.)
22
Gamaliel also insists on the difference between human and divine criteria about the
merit of every individual, see Baptistes, ll. 154–8, which is inspired by a topos of the Holy
Scriptures: ‘Non sceptra spectat, non parentum stemmata, / decusue formae aut regias
opes Deus, / polluta nullo corda sed contagio, / crudelitatis, fraudis et libidinis; / hoc
ille templo spiritus capitur sacer’ (God does not look to sceptres, ancestral genealogies,
beauty of appearance or royal wealth, but to hearts stained with no infection of cruelty,
deceit and lust. This is the temple in which that holy Spirit is enclosed.)
23
Ille, ut tunsa furentibus
Ilex dura aquilonibus
Aut rupes remeabili
Quam fluctu mare uerberat,
Nullo concutitur metu.
(But he, like a hard oak battered by raging north winds, or a rock which the sea as-
saults with its resurging waves, is shattered by no fear.)
24
e.g. Iephthes, ll. 1381–2: ‘Vultu remisso constitit firma ac sui / Secura fati […]’ (she
stood with features relaxed, constant and untroubled about her fate […]).
25
Baptistes, l. 1102 (John’s last prayer to God): ‘Sinu recepta naufragum hoc corpus-
culum’ (Receive in your bosom this shipwrecked, mean body).
52 Carine Ferradou
tortures that God can inflict in the beyond are much more terrible than the
physical death ordered by a tyrant.26 His definition of death is essentially
eschatological:27 John thinks that the person who does not see God (with
whom a direct relationship is possible only in the Kingdom of Heaven) is
in a manner of speaking dead, and that he who gazes upon the Lord in this
world already enjoys the true life, because he drinks from the source of
every life. John means that all the acts and thoughts of humankind should
be focused on God, because He is the Lord of the universe, and people
who acknowledge their status as creatures are led by their obedience to a
new life, and not to destruction.
Iphis is sorry that she has not shed her blood more frequently for the
salvation of her family and her people, and she encourages the hesitant
Priest to kill her. Christian ethics, similarly, belittles the body and tradi-
tionally brings out moral sufferings, which are deeper and more lasting
than physical pain, before and after death. Iphis is the paragon of the
perfect believer, who never ignores the Lord’s reaction to human acts. Her
last prayer proves it.
Iphis’ and John’s heroism, resting on resignation to their fates, unwave-
ringness, and contempt for death, illustrates both Christian philosophy
and the ideal of the Stoic sage, which Renaissance humanists often
endeavoured to reconcile with Christianity. Buchanan’s main characters
are heroic and nonetheless humble, because they deeply believe in divine
order and justice. This conception raises the issue of the place of human-
kind in the universe.
26
Mortem minatur alter; alter me uetat
Mortem timere, pollicetur praemium
Vim non timenti. Corpus alter perdere
Potest; at alter corpus una et spiritum
Torquere flamma poterit ineuitabili.
Hi cum repugnent, consule utri paream.
(One threatens death, the other forbids me fear death and promises a reward if I
do not fear violence. One can destroy my body, but the other will be able to torture
body and spirit in flames unavoidable. Since they are opposed to each other, advise
me which I should obey.)
and 1044–5: ‘Non sperno mortem, at morte momentanea / Fugio perennem…’ (I do
not despise death, but I flee from the death which abides by espousing that which is
momentary…).
27
See Baptistes, l. 1086: ‘Quem [=Deum] contueri est uita, mors non cernere’ (For to
gaze on him is life, and not to see him is death).
What Place for Humankind in the Universe?

Direct or suggested condemnations of violence are numerous throughout
Buchanan’s tragedies. In spite of the avowed unity of action in Baptistes,
some critics think that the links between the scenes are tenuous.28
However, my point of view is that the continuous progression of the
theme of violence precisely gives the play some consistency. The Chorus,
in particular, keeps on deploring the use of force in a city where, as they
say, ‘prophets are killed by the sword of a tyrant’.29
In Iephthes, the Priest and Storge strongly underline how horrible the
sacrifice of Iphis is. The Sacerdos insists on the uselessness of bloody
sacrifices,30 then he asks Jephtha according to what law one has to sacrifice
28
e.g. Émile Faguet, La Tragédie française au seizième siècle (1550–1600) (Paris:
Fontemoing, 1912), p. 73.
29
Baptistes, l. 603: ‘Vates pereunt ense tyranni’.
30
SACERDOS. […] Nostro non litatur uictimis
Deo cruentis bubuloue sanguine,
Polluta nullo corda sed contagio
Et mens recocta ueritate simplice
Illi offerenda et casta conscientia.
IEPHTHES. Cur ergo leges uictimas sacrae imperant?
SAC. Non quod bidentis caede gaudeat deus
Famemue caesi carnibus uituli expleat,
Sed audientes esse nos monitis iubet.
IEPH. Non nuncupata uota oportet reddere?
SAC. Sed nuncupare iusta tantum lex iubet.
IEPH. Istud fuisset rectius ab exordio
Id polliceri quod probant ritus patrum.
Nunc, re peracta, quod semel uotum est deo
Lex missa caelo nos iubet dependere.
SAC. Mactare natos quae parentes lex iubet?
IEPH. Quae uota iussit nuncupata reddere.
SAC. Fasne est uouere quod nefas est reddere?
IEPH. Quin immo summum est uota non soluere nefas.
SAC. Quid si cremare iura uouisses patrum?
IEPH. Nemo ista sanus uota nuncupauerit.
SAC. Cur? Nonne sacris quod repugnent legibus?
IEPH. Sic est.
SAC. Quid ergo qui trucidat liberos?
IEPH. Non tam quid agitur interest quam cur agas.
SAC. Parere iussis tibi uidetur numinis?
(PRIEST. […] Our God is not offered gory victims or the blood of cattle; but hearts
defiled by no pollution, a mind refined by ingenuous truth, and a chaste conscience
are to be offered to him. JEPH. Why then do our sacred laws enjoin victims? PRIEST.
54 Carine Ferradou
one’s own children, and he suggests that it is a nefas (a sacrilege) to utter

unrealisable vows which oppose human and divine laws. The violence
implied by Jephtha’s promise as well as by Malchus and the Queen’s
claims appears deeply contrary to the sacred order of the Creation, as the
Priest suggests in Iephthes.
Jephtha himself knows not only that his crime disrupts human and
moral laws, but also that it repels Nature, because he asks together the
sun, his ancestors who protect the Hebrews beyond the ages, and every
innocent man to turn their gaze away from the despicable rite he is going
to perform.31 The oxymoron exsecrandis sacris emphasises Jephtha’s
feeling of guilt, even if he keeps on proclaiming his piety. His desperate
apostrophe to the sun may be a reminiscence of an extract from Seneca’s
Thyestes, when the main character, who has just eaten his children, states
that his sacrilege disrupts the harmony of the whole universe.32
Senecan characters are in many ways parricides in the Latin meaning
of the word; that is why their crimes are the most inhuman of all, and
seem to threaten a larger group than the characters directly involved in
the tragic plot.33 This kind of crime infringes the natural rules for the
preservation of both the generations and the positive features of every
‘clan’. Similarly, Jephtha’s murder of his only child destroys what is the
Not because God rejoices in the slaughter of a sacrificial sheep, or satiates his hun-
ger with the flesh of a slain steer; rather he bids us harken to his warnings. JEPH.
Should we not fulfil vows which have been uttered? PRIEST. Yes, but the law bids
us utter only vows that are just. JEPH. It would have been better initially to pro-
mise what our father’s customs approve; but now the thing is done, and the law
descended from heaven bids us fulfil what has been once vowed to God. PRIEST.
What law bids parents slay their children? JEPH. The law which bade fulfilment
of vows proclaimed. PRIEST. Is it right to vow what it is sacrilege to fulfil? JEPH.
Rather, the greatest sacrilege is not to carry out vows. PRIEST. Supposing you had
vowed to burn our father’s laws? JEPH. No man of sound mind would proclaim
such vows. PRIEST. Why? Surely because they are at odds with sacred laws? JEPH.
That is so. PRIEST. What then of the man who slaughters his children? JEPH. It
is not so much what is done as why one does it. PRIEST. Do you consider it right to
obey the deity’s commands?)
31
Iephthes, ll. 842–4: ‘O sol diurnae lucis auctor, o patres, / O quicquid hominum
sceleris immune es, procul / Auerte uultus exsecrandis a sacris’ (O sun, creator of the
light of day, O ancestors, O all you men who have no part in sin, turn your faces far from
this accursed sacrifice).
32
Thyestes, ll. 992–5: ‘Quid hoc? Magis magisque concussi labant / Conuexa coeli;
spissior densis coit / Caligo tenebris noxque se in noctem abdidit; / Fugit omne sidus
[…]’ (What happens? The depths of shaken heaven rock more and more, dense darkness
becomes even more obscure and compact, the night hid in the night, every star fled […]).
33
See Florence Dupont, Les Monstres de Sénèque (Paris: Belin, 1995).
most precious thing for his own family, and for the whole Hebrew commu-
nity: a treasure of values and virtues patiently handed down through the
ages. The noble behaviour of Iphis shows she would have been the worthy
heir of this treasure. Suddenly lucid and frightened, Jephtha wishes to
descend into Tartarus before becoming a ‘parricide’.34 Through this
mythological expression, which is traditional and commonly found in the
sixteenth century, Jephtha compares himself to those pagan damned that
have precisely been punished in Hell for threatening the human, cosmic,
and divine orders. So Jephtha for a while considers himself no more as a
creature of God, but as a monster, which has to die.
On the other hand, in Baptistes, John’s prayer35 insists on the complete

34
Aut tu, cruorem uirginalem innoxium

Potura tellus, hisce patulos in specus
Sinuque uasto me uora; dum non nocens
Perire possim quolibet me obrue loco.
Vel ipsum adire non recuso Tartarum,
Modo parricida Tartarum non incolam.
(Or do you, earth which is to drink in the innocent blood of the maiden, suck me into
your open caverns and devour me in your boundless womb. As long as I can die in
innocence, bury me anywhere. I do not refuse to enter hell itself, so long as I do not
dwell in hell as slayer of my kin.)
35
IO. O magne rerum rector auctor arbiter,
Te quicquid aër continet laxo sinu,
Quaecumque tellus educat, quicquid suis
Fretum sub undis nutrit, agnoscit deum,
Sentit parentem, legibus semel datis
Obsequitur ultro tramite immutabili.
Iussu tuo uer pingit arua floribus,
Fruges dat aestas, fundit autumnus merum,
Hiems pruinis uestit albicantibus
Montes; in aequor curua uoluunt flumina
Moles aquarum, mare reciprocat uices,
Noctem Diana, Phoebus incendit diem
Et inquieta lustrat orbem lampade.
Nil denique usquam est siue caelo seu solo
Quod non libenter pareat regi suo,
Amet parentem et officiis quibus potest
In conditorem studia declaret sua.
At solus homo, quem ceteris longe magis
Gaudere decuit et obsequi iussis dei,
Contemptor unus inter omnes maxime est.
Praecepta spernit, frena legum reicit,
In omne praeceps facinus it; libidine
Metitur aequum, ponderat ius uiribus.
56 Carine Ferradou
submission of Creation to God’s omnipotence, as do the hymns of the

Psalms and of Christian poets such as Prudentius, but he blames mankind
for forgetting the strong relationship that connects nature, humankind,
and the divine world, and so for doing evil. John’s behaviour reminds
them of the sacred and spiritual dimension of every human life, which,
according to Genesis,36 has been placed at the summit of the universe
because human beings have been made ‘in [God’s] image, after [his]
likeness’.
In Buchanan’s tragedies, the prophet and the sacrificed virgin repre-
sent the individual who is fully integrated into the cosmic masterpiece
conceived by God and who finds his perfect place in the universe, even
beyond death. As an element of Creation, every person who accepts
the humble but essential role that he or she has to play — guaranteeing
universal balance — gains some supreme and inviolable dignity. From a
humanistic point of view as well as from a religious one, each individual
has such a precious value that the execution of both the holy characters
appears even more appalling.
Iphis’s death is an extreme example of the cruelty of mankind, even
if mankind’s intention and feelings seem to be good (Jephtha loves his
daughter and he thinks his ‘piety’ is right); the horror of this death is similar
to that which pagan myths can produce (if we refer back to Thyestes or the
stories related to Agamemnon). In the prologue, the Angel stresses human
responsibility when he says that the misfortune of Jephtha’s family is an
(JOHN. Great ruler, creator, lord of the universe, all that the air contains in its yield-
ing bosom, all that the earth brings forth, all that the sea nurtures beneath its waves
acknowledges you as God, experiences you as parent, and follows your laws once
given in unchangeable course. At your command the spring decks the fields with
blossoms, summer proffers harvests, autumn pours forth wine, and winter clothes
the mountains with whitening frosts. Winding rivers roll down to the sea masses of
waters, the sea’s tides ebb and flow, Diana fires the night and Phoebus the day as he
traverses the world with his unresting torch. In short, there is nothing whatsoever in
heaven or on earth which does not gladly obey its king, love its father, and declare its
zeal for its founder with all the functions which it can achieve. Only man, for whom
much more than for the rest of creation it would be fitting to rejoice in and to obey
God’s commands, amongst all and supremely registers contempt. He spurns God’s
commands, rejects the reins of the laws, and rushes headlong into every crime. He
measures justice by wantonness, and weighs law by violence.)
36
Genesis, 1. 26–7 (from The Bible: Authorized King James Version with Apocrypha
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997): ‘And God said, Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl
of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that
creepeth upon the earth. And God created the man in his own image, in the image of God
created he him; male and female created he them.’
example of the outcomes of pride and impiety, two usual sins amongst
the Hebrews.37 As regards John’s execution, sixteenth-century Protestants
interpreted it as the symbol of contemporary persecutions, which are
subtly alluded to in the prologue of Baptistes.38 Buchanan’s opinion seems
to be that human beings are seldom equal to the duty that God assigns to
them, that is why their sufferings remain so numerous, and their respon-
sibility often becomes an unavoidable burden.
Drama may be compared to a parable, a speech full of imagery which
strikes the minds with its clarity and has a moral meaning larger than its
37
Ac uix, lupatis domitus et calcaribus
Duris cruentus, redit ad officium et suo
Obtemperat ero, sic populus hic peruicax
Ceruice dura, pronus in peius, flagrum
Si conquieuit paululum, nouos deos
Adsciscit et se dedit aliis ritibus,
Ignota sacra sequitur. Atque adeo parens
Benignus animos turgidos licentia
Bello fameue pestilentiue aere
Frangit, rebellem comprimens ferociam.
(Subdued by the curb and bloodied by the harsh spurs it sullenly resumes its duty
and obeys its master. In the same way this headstrong people, stiff-necked and in-
clined to the worse, acquires new gods, devotes itself to other rites, and pursues
unknown ceremonies if the whip rests silent for a little while. Thereupon, the kindly
father shatters their minds, inflated with self-indulgence, by means of war, hunger
or wind of infection, and so crushes their insurgent aggression.)
38
Baptistes, ll. 42–51, based on the opposition between the adjectives uetus and
nouus, which, beyond the generalisation of the timeless meaning of the plot, suggest some
link with the current troubles caused by the spiritual disagreements throughout Europe
and the advent of Protestantism:
Porro uocare fabulam ueterem aut nouam
Per me licebit cuique pro arbitrio suo.
Nam si uetusta est ante multa saecula
Res gesta, ueteres inter haec censebitur;
Sin quod recenti memoria uiget nouum
Existimemus, haec erit prorsus noua.
Nam donec hominum genus erit, semper nouae
Fraudes nouaeque suppetent calumniae,
Liuorque semper improbus premet probos;
Vis iura uincet, fucus innocentiam.
(But so far as I am concerned, every man can call the play old or new according to
his judgment; for if an event enacted many centuries ago is old, this will be reckoned
among the old, but if we consider as new what is fresh from recent recollection, this
will certainly be new. As long as the human race lasts, new deceits, new calumnies
will always exist, and wicked spite will always oppress worthy men. Violence will
prevail over right, deceit over innocence.)
58 Carine Ferradou
literal sense. In Buchanan’s tragedies, it consists in the condemnation of

the deep consequences of violence, which reckless and insane men may
forget.
In conclusion, the ethics of both plays corresponds to ideas commonly

shared by European humanists.
Buchanan insists on the limits of the human condition, but also on its
dignity and its worth: as one part of the universe, mankind is submitted
to certain unchanging rules. Nonetheless, created in the image of God,
endowed with thought, reason, and conscience, human beings are placed
at the highest level of the cosmic structure in order to contemplate God’s
masterpiece and to pay Him the greatest homage, through their free
submission and faithful gratitude.
Concretely, this duty is achieved when one respects the natural, human
and divine laws, preserves the future generations and rejects all manners
of violence. Anybody who infringes upon these requirements dooms
himself to misfortune, and above all jeopardises the society to which he
belongs. Beyond good and evil, piety or impiety, the tragic process of
Buchanan’s sacred plays involves symbolically the existence of human-
kind itself.
Appendix:
Summaries of Both Tragedies
Baptistes siue Calumnia (first edition: London, Thomas Vautrollier, 1577,

but first version: Bordeaux, probably in the 1540s.)
Prologue: the Prologus presents the subject, defining it as both old and
current.
First episode: Rabbis Malchus and Gamaliel expound very different
points of view about John the Baptist, an ascetic who condemns evil
servants of the traditional cult and commends repentance. Malchus is
angry with his colleague’s toleration and decides to complain to ‘King’
Herod. Gamaliel talks with the Chorus of the Jews about the evil counsel-
lors driving weak kings to fruitless cruelty.
First chorus of the Jews: they lament the nastiness and the craftiness of
men such as Malchus.
Second episode: dialogue between ‘the Queen’, who wants John the
Baptist to be arrested, and Herod, who still considers him as a saint.
Third episode: Herod leads a kind of interrogation. In his defence, the
prophet professes his absolute obedience to God. When Herod is alone,

he muses over the difficulties of being a king, then decides to punish John
the Baptist: from now on he will consider him as a rebel.
The Chorus asks for God’s help and professes its faith in His omnipo-
tence, past as well as present.
Fourth episode: Malchus wants to win by fair means or foul against
John, who is reviling the Levites, the scribes, and the priests. When
Malchus questions him about his ‘mission’, he answers with Isaiah’s
prophecy about Christ’s coming as repeated in the Gospel according to
St John (1l. 19–27). Malchus does not understand the allusion, and his
threats put an end to the discussion.
Quick chorus about vices and crimes: they will not go unpunished for
ever.
Fifth episode: Malchus encourages the Queen to do everything to try
and convince Herod to put John the Baptist to death: from now on, the
rabbi and the Queen will scheme together.
The Chorus condemns Envy and Slander, which support Tyranny, and
admires the constancy of the prophet.
Sixth episode: the Chorus warns John the Baptist of a fatal danger, but
John says that he is not frightened by death, which he sees as a transitory
passage leading to a better and eternal life.
The Chorus asserts its hope in the future life that will bring the right-
eous a long rest, and the wicked eternal damnation.
Seventh episode: the Queen, alone on stage, briefly recounts what
happened during a ‘recent’ celebration, when her daughter danced in
front of Herod: he promised to give her whatever she wanted, and she
swore she would ask for the head of the prophet.
Eighth episode: when he knows what Salome wants, Herod tries to
elude his promise, for he dreads the people’s angry reaction after the
death of the greatly liked man. The Queen says once again that she will
take on the entire responsibility of this death, in order to make an example
to the people.
The Chorus laments the impiety of its contemporaries, who stain their
hands with the blood of an innocent prophet, and the Chorus forecasts
the punishment of Israel (actually the seizure and the destruction of Jeru-
salem in AD 70, during the reign of Titus).
Ninth episode: a messenger briefly informs the Chorus that John the
Baptist has been beheaded, and reminds them that death is considered by
pious people as deliverance and not as misfortune.
60 Carine Ferradou
Iephthes siue Votum (first edition: Paris, Guillaume Morel, 1554)

Prologue: an Angel briefly tells the story of the Hebrews, then Jephtha’s
life, and what the core of the tragedy is: the sacrifice of his only daughter
which is linked with his vow (he promised to sacrifice to God the first
creature he saw if he won the battle against the sons of Ammon).
First episode: Jephtha’s wife, Storge, worries about an obscure nightmare
that she recounts to her daughter, Iphis. The girl does not want to believe in
this ill omen, and hopes for her father’s complete victory.
First chorus of the girls of Israel: they ask for God’s help against their
oppressors, and remember His numerous acts of mercy.
Second episode: a messenger expounds to the Chorus how Jephtha won
the battle thanks to divine intervention.
The Chorus praises God and admires Jephtha’s feat. They ask Iphis to go
and make herself beautiful in order to welcome her triumphant father as soon
as he is back.
Third episode: in front of the Chorus, Jephtha thanks God and expresses
once again his impious vow.
But (fourth episode) Iphis and a friend called Symmachus come and
congratulate him. Neither of them understands why he suddenly seems so
unhappy (because he knows now that he must sacrifice his daughter). Iphis
wonders if she has committed a misdeed towards her father, then she reas-
sures herself: she knows she is innocent.
The Chorus remains happy and optimistic, as well as Iphis who leaves the
stage.
Fifth episode: after a long discussion with Symmachus, Jephtha confesses
his horrible vow, his friend tries to convince him not to kill his child, but
Jephtha remains steadfast: his promise is sacred, so he must fulfil it.
Deeply frightened and compassionate, the Chorus says they will warn
Iphis and her mother of the misfortune that threatens them both; for the
moment, they lament the dreadful reverses of fortune that humankind has
to suffer.
Sixth episode: the priest who must sacrifice the victim endeavours to
reason with Jephtha: he demonstrates that God cannot take pleasure in this
sacrilegious sacrifice, and that it is possible and desirable not to fulfil such a
promise. Jephtha answers that divine truth is absolute and does not allow the
slightest compromise.
The Chorus laments the misfortune of both female characters, who are
back on stage at the end of the Chorus song.
Seventh episode: Storge blames her husband for his cruelty and reminds
him of the right of any mother to save the child to whom she gave birth.
Iphis also asks for her father’s pity. But Jephtha remains unyielding, although
he suffers deeply and would like to die instead of his daughter, if it were
possible. Iphis understands her father’s great despair, and then deliberately
consents to die.
The Chorus mourns for its young friend, and admires her courage, which
will make her illustrious for ever.
Eighth episode: the Messenger tells Storge how the sacrifice unfolded:
Iphis’ composure remained sublime until the last moment. According to the
Messenger, this behaviour should console the mother, but Storge refuses any
comfort, saying that her daughter’s heroism makes this loss even harder, and
her own sorrow even deeper.
E-mail: carineferradou@yahoo.fr
Elia Borza
La traduction de tragédies grecques:
Alessandro Pazzi de’ Medici et les problèmes liés
à la métrique
La traduction de tragédies grecques a sans nul doute été une activité

importante tout au long de la Renaissance européenne, depuis Érasme
jusqu’à Melanchthon et Buchanan. Une difficulté majeure dans ces travaux
est constituée par la traduction en vers des tragédies grecques. Comme
exemple de ces traductions, je vais examiner l’œuvre d’un humaniste peu
connu réalisée dans les années 1525, Alessandro Pazzi de’ Medici.
Son nom, tout d’abord, peut surprendre, car les familles Pazzi et
Médicis étaient rivales, voire ennemies: il suffit de se rappeler la conspi-
ration des Pazzi qui se termina par l’horrible meurtre de Giuliano de’
Medici à la fin du XVe siècle. Alessandro, lui, était le fils de Bianca, la
sœur de Lorenzo il Magnifico. Il est né en 1483 et fréquenta l’école de
Francesco Cattani da Diacceto, où il rencontra Palla, Giovanni et Cosimo
Rucellai, Filippo et Lorenzo Strozzi, Luigi Alamanni, Donato Giannotti,
Piero Vettori et Luca Della Robbia. Il fut membre de l’Accademia sacra
fiorentina et se lia d’amitié avec Niccolò Leonico Tomeo et Giulio de’
Medici, le futur pape Clément VII. On ne connaît pas exactement l’année
de sa mort, mais on peut dire qu’il était toujours vivant en octobre 1530 et
déjà décédé en 1532.
Alessandro Pazzi s’intéressa surtout aux tragédies grecques. Il a traduit
l’Électre et l’Œdipe Roi de Sophocle en latin d’abord, puis le même Œdipe
Roi en italien. Il a aussi traduit l’Iphigénie en Tauride d’Euripide en latin
et en italien. Il composa également une traduction latine du Cyclope du
même Euripide, et rédigea une tragédie en italien, Didon, inspirée du
chant IV de l’Énéide de Virgile. Toutes ces œuvres sont encore manus-
crites et pour la plupart inédites, à l’exception de la traduction latine de la
Poétique d’Aristote imprimée à titre posthume en 1536.1
Les traductions latines sont toutes deux conservées par les deux
mêmes manuscrits. Le premier est à la Biblioteca Classense de Ravenne
1
En ce moment, je suis en train de travailler à l’édition critique des traductions de
Sophocle en collaboration avec le Professeur De Martino de l’Université de Foggia et
j’espère qu’elles verront bientôt le jour.
64 Elia Borza
et contient des corrections autographes de l’auteur (Ravenne, Biblio-

teca Classense, cod. 372); le second se trouve à la Biblioteca Nazionale
Centrale de Florence (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, II, IV, 8
[= Magl. VII, 950 bis]).
Le manuscrit de Ravenne commence par deux poèmes en l’honneur de
Pazzi, mais aucun indice, même pas une préface, ne permet de retracer
l’histoire de ce manuscrit depuis Florence jusqu’à Ravenne.
L’histoire du second manuscrit, en revanche, est mieux connue. Le fils
d’Alessandro, l’Abbé Giovanni Pazzi, le donna à Paganino Paganini en
1564. Paganini était imprimeur à Venise entre 1584 et 1591. Une note à la
fin du manuscrit confirme cette histoire:
Questo libro mi diede l’Abate, cioè Messer Giovanni Pazzi alli 4 di settem-
bre, anno MDLXIV, essendo io in casa sua in Pistoia. Poi alli 18 del mede-
simo trovandolo amalato in Firenze, mi ’l raccomandò strettissimamente;
dicendomi che s’altro fosse di lui: quando io mai potessi: e ’l giudicassi
degno: che ’l facessi stampare: mutate: e corrette quelle cose che mi piaces-
sino da mutare: ò di correggere così ’l tengo con tal’ animo ricordeuoli della
fede data da me à lui quando egli tra l’altre cose spesse uolte mi replicò che
nol dessi ad altri, ne anco a fratel suo. Et essendo poi morto detto Messer
Giovanni alli 6 d’ottobre seguente ho uoluto che di mia mano appaia il uero
di quanto ho detto di sopra. In Pistoia alli di 20 di novembre anno MDLXIV.
Eglie così Io Pagano Paganini scrissi di mia mano. Vale.
En 1679, le manuscrit devint possession de Luigi Strozzi, le fils de Carlo

Strozzi. L’entière bibliothèque de ce dernier, 3000 volumes, passa au
cardinal Francesco Barberini à Rome, et finit par aboutir, après plusieurs
intermédiaires, à la Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale à Florence.
La même note en fin de manuscrit révèle un autre élément intéres-
sant: Giovanni Pazzi avait demandé à Paganini d’imprimer ces traduc-
tions, mais ce dernier ne l’a jamais fait. Nous ne savons pas pourquoi. Un
autre fils d’Alessandro, Guglielmo, a écrit, dans une lettre à Francesco
Campano, que son père ne voulait pas imprimer ses travaux et les garder
comme exemple domestique pour ses enfants:2
Voluit igitur pater suam hanc lucubrationem, magis domestici exempli cau-
sa, et monumenta et quasi vestigia studiorum suorum, intra proprios pa-
rietes contineri, quam ex eius nondum perfectae et absolutae, ut ipsemet
ad Leonicum scribens testatur, editione, famam et existimationem suam,
2
Lettre citée dans A. Pazzi de’ Medici, Le tragedie metriche, a cura di Alessandro
Solerti (Bologne, 1887), p. 16.
La traduction de tragédies grecques 65
quam omnibus aliis in rebus honeste agendam atque amplificandam summo

studio et labore curavit in periculum discrimenque venire.
Ce manuscrit débute par une lettre dédicatoire rédigée par Giovanni et

adressée au pape Clément VII, en date du 13 août 1532. Il dit que, au
milieu de tous les papiers de son père, il a trouvé une lettre à Clément VII
et la traduction latine de deux pièces de Sophocle, et que lui, Giovanni, a
décidé de les envoyer à leur destinataire.
Suit une autre lettre, toujours adressée au pape Clément VII, mais
rédigée par Alessandro lui-même et datée du 5 avril 1527. Il y explique sa
technique de traduction: il a non seulement essayé de conserver l’arrange-
ment du discours de Sophocle et le discours suivi des dialogues, mais il a
aussi voulu exprimer le sens entier et ne rien changer, sauf les figures de
style. Pazzi admet néanmoins qu’il a éprouvé des difficultés, surtout dans
la traduction des chœurs:
Ego vero summum praecipue studium adhibui ut non solum omnem or-
dinem celeberrimi vatis perpetuumque orationis filum servarem, verum
etiam dum integrum sensum exprimere conor, atque adeo nihil praeter figu-
ras dictionis immutarem, opus interim mihi vel minimum non excresceret.
[…] Id quod cum in tota tragoedia factu multo difficillimum est, tum uero
maxime in choris, quorum primum cum ad normam illam Pindaricam a
Sophocle extructum fuisse animadverterim, eadem prorsus servata ratione
reddere Latinum volui. In quo quidem quid potuerim quid non potuerim alii
iudicabunt, certe pro viribus experiri libuit.
Le manuscrit de Ravenne comporte donc des corrections autographes qui

ont été intégrées dans le manuscrit de Florence. Alessandro a probable-
ment dicté sa traduction à un copiste pour ensuite la corriger lui-même,
avant de la faire copier pour en envoyer un exemplaire à Clément VII —
qui d’ailleurs ne l’a jamais reçue.3
La première chose à observer dans cette traduction concerne la
métrique. Dans les dialogues, Pazzi utilise le trimètre iambique, tout
comme Sophocle en grec. Par contre, dans les chœurs, certains vers
s’écartent tout à fait du schéma des trimètres iambiques et peuvent diffi-
cilement être rattachés à un autre schéma connu. Comme nous le verrons
plus tard, Pazzi ne fut pas le seul à éprouver quelques problèmes avec la
métrique des chœurs.
Clément VII meurt le 25 septembre 1534.

3
66 Elia Borza
A propos du texte latin en lui-même, Pazzi a produit une traduction

littéraire et il a tenté de respecter le rythme latin de la versification. On
peut en effet relever des caractères propres à une traduction versifiée.4
Ces phénomènes s’expliquent par la contrainte du nombre de syllabes. Le
premier phénomène est l’amplification du texte, dont le but est de meubler
l’espace du vers. Pazzi a eu besoin d’introduire un certain nombre de
syllabes pour composer un trimètre iambique. Globalement, le sens du
texte de Sophocle n’est pas altéré: les termes sont simplement amplifiés.
D’autres amplifications peuvent être considérées comme des précisions,
des explications du texte grec original; il y a également des mots simples
traduits par deux mots en latin. Ces additions, comme les précédentes,
n’altèrent pas le sens du texte grec: elles apportent des détails supplémen-
taires tout en permettant à Pazzi d’obtenir le nombre exact de syllabes.
D’autres distorsions peuvent aussi apparaître. En effet, Pazzi a éliminé
certains mots du texte grec. La plupart du temps, ces omissions concernent
des particules, des pronoms, des adverbes grecs difficilement transpo-
sables en latin ou qui ne sont pas absolument nécessaires à la compré-
hension du sens. Par exemple: ἤδη, ὤ, γάρ, ἐγώ, ἀλλά, τινά et même ἄναξ
(OR 96). Ces omissions sont cependant sans conséquence sur le texte de
Sophocle.
Mais d’autres omissions, elles, altèrent le sens original:
OR 25-27 5
φθίνουσα μὲν κάλυξιν ἐγκάρποις χθονὸς, Corrupta terrae viscera affectae
negant
φθίνουσα δ᾿ ἀγέλαις βουνόμοις τόκοισί τε
Fructus, gregum iamque ubera
haud partus alunt
ἀγόνοις γυναικῶν· Foetusque nec puerperae ad fru-
gem ferunt.
OR 54-55 6
ὡς εἴπερ ἄρξεις τῆσδε γῆς ὥσπερ κρατεῖς Nam pulchrius tibi fuerit regnum
viris
4
Cf. Daniel Donnet, Le ‘Philoctète’ en vers français, de Charles Delanoue: Étude et
édition critique, Travaux de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’Université Catholique
de Louvain, 40 (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1997).
5
Texte grec: ‘Détruisant les calices qui portent les fruits de la terre, détruisant les trou-
peaux de bœufs et les enfantements stériles des femmes.’ — Texte latin: ‘Les entrailles
corrompues de la terre fatiguée refusent leurs fruits et les mamelles des troupeaux ne
nourrissent plus les rejetons ni leurs petits.’
6
Texte grec: ‘Si bien que, si tu règnes dans le futur sur cette terre comme tu gouvernes
maintenant, il est préférable que tu gouvernes sur une terre avec des hommes que sur une
terre déserte.’ — Texte latin: ‘En effet, il serait plus beau pour toi d’avoir le règne que tu
possèdes richement pourvu en hommes plutôt que vide (d’hommes).’
ξὺν ἀνδράσιν κάλλιον ἢ κενῆς κρατεῖν. Quod possides habere praedives

quam inops.
OR 164-167 7
εἴ ποτε καὶ προτέρας ἄτας ὑπερ si priorum cladum olim fuistis
vindices
ὀρνυμένας πόλει benigni adeste nunc quoque
ἠνύσατ᾿ ἐκτοπίαν φλόγα πήματος, pellite quaeso
ἔλθετε καὶ νῦν. tabificam procul hinc luem.
Dans le premier texte, l’idée de destruction exprimée par la répétition du

participe φθίνουσα μὲν…φθίνουσα δέ… est à peine présente dans le parti-
cipe corrupta. De même, la métaphore des calices (κάλυξιν) est supprimée
et la traduction latine de ce passage est plus difficile à comprendre que
l’original grec. Dans le deuxième texte, l’idée de régner dans le futur sur
Thèbes (εἴπερ ἄρξεις τῆσδε γῆς) n’est pas du tout traduite en latin. Dans
le dernier exemple, Pazzi supprime ὑπερ ὀρνυμένας πόλει (‘se dressant en
faveur de la ville’) et transforme la flamme portée au loin (ἐκτοπίαν φλόγα)
en maladie infectieuse (‘tabificam luem’).
Enfin, à plusieurs reprises, il semble que la traduction latine ne corres-
ponde pas au texte grec. Bien que le sens général reste identique, le lecteur
ne peut cependant pas trouver les mêmes nuances que dans l’original de
Sophocle.
En conclusion, la volonté de Pazzi de rédiger une traduction versifiée
lui a imposé certaines règles de composition: amplifications, retraits,
suppressions pour respecter le cadre métrique qu’il s’était imposé. Ces
contraintes ne l’ont néanmoins pas empêché de réaliser une traduction
assez proche du texte grec, surtout par le sens.
Il s’agit maintenant d’examiner le texte plus en profondeur pour voir si
Pazzi s’écarte, au niveau du sens, de l’original grec. C’est surtout dans les
chœurs que pourraient se rencontrer ces divergences.
D’abord, il faut remarquer que le sens des chants du chœur est globa-
lement identique, même si Pazzi remplace certaines images par d’autres.
Ainsi la parole jaillie du Parnasse se transforme en lumière provenant du
Parnasse (OR 475 φάμα Παρνασσοῦ; Pazzi, f. 50r: Parnassi lux). De même,
l’image de la pierre prophétique de Delphes est simplement remplacée
par le dieu de Delphes qui dit la vérité et porte le laurier (OR 463–4 ἁ
7
Texte grec: ‘Si un jour vous avez éloigné la flamme du fléau lors des malheurs passés
qui se sont dressés contre la ville, venez encore maintenant.’ — Texte latin: ‘Si vous avez
été jadis les vengeurs des crimes du passé, venez, bienveillants maintenant aussi. Je vous
en prie, chassez loin d’ici cette maladie infectieuse.’
68 Elia Borza
θεσπιέπεια Δελφὶς πέτρα; Pazzi, f. 49v: Delphici onerante lauri veridici

Dei). On a également des imprécisions dans la traduction de certains
termes, comme ὕβρις qui devient la violens vis.8
Cependant, Pazzi a bien respecté le sens global des chants du chœur.
Les chœurs dans la traduction latine de Pazzi restent du point de vue
sémantique très proches de l’original grec, même si, à plusieurs reprises,
le Florentin a remplacé certaines images présentes chez Sophocle par
d’autres de son cru; parfois il les a simplement effacées.
Ces difficultés métriques évoquées plus haut ont constitué un problème
pour bon nombre d’humanistes qui ont décidé de traduire des tragédies
grecques en latin.
En 1541, Gentien Hervet, dans la préface de sa traduction de l’Anti-
gone, admet qu’il est très difficile de traduire à partir du grec, surtout
les Tragiques; il ajoute qu’il n’a pas traduit les chœurs en respectant la
métrique, mais en exprimant le sens:
Est certe longe difficillimum e bene Graecis bene Latina reddere: sed ni-
hil est difficilius, quam cum est e Graecis tragicis vertendum. [...] Quibus
si Graeca cum Latinis conferre voluerint, non ingratum meum laborem
futurum non dubito. Huius tamen lectores admonitos volo, me in choris
vertendis nullam penitus carminis rationem habuisse, et satis me facturum
putasse, si in his, quae nec multum conferunt, et a scriptore de industria
obscurata sunt, sensum utcunque exprimerem. In reliquis autem ut carmine
sententiam exprimerem, sedulo conatum esse: sed non ubique tamen id ef-
ficere potuisse.
Thomas Watson (Antigone, 1581) n’hésite pas, en dessous des sous-

titres (Actus Primus, Secundus … Carmen Choricum), à introduire des
remarques concernant le type de mètre qu’il a utilisé en latin (Iambicum
Trimetrum, Senarii Iambici; Carmen Choricum ex variis metri gene-
ribus ac eisdem quibus utitur Sophocles; Carmen Chori varie mixtum, et
eiusdem generis cum Graeco…).
Mais seulement trois auteurs ont donné des indications plus précises
sur la métrique latine qu’ils ont employée dans leurs traductions: il s’agit
de Jean Lalamant (1557), Thomas Kirchmayer-Naogeorgos (1558) et
Georges Rataller (1570).
Lalamant est le plus complet. Dans sa Carminis ratio au début de sa
traduction, il expose d’abord les règles du sénaire iambique en latin:
8
OR 873; Pazzi, f. 58r.
Quanquam Iambici Senarii lex postulare videtur, ut locis paribus Iambus,

tribrachus, aut Anapestus: imparibus vero praeter supra dictos, Spondaeus,
& Dactylus locum habeant: tantam tamen licentiam in fundendis Dimetris,
& Senariis usurparunt Comici Latini, ut reperirentur qui a Terentio, quod
eius carmen praescriptam senarii legem non servaret, proximeque ad ora-
tionem solutam accederet, ullam carminis legem esse observatam negarent.
Quos & idem de caeteris Comicis Latinis iudicaturos fuisse crediderim, si
illorum scripta ad illorum quoque manus pervenissent. Haud ita dissimilem
ab illis licentiam usurpauisse videtur & M. Tullius qui in plerisque locis,
quos de Graeco in Latinos Senarios convertit, adeo libere fundit trimetros
Iambicos, ut ultimae sedis, in qua semper Iambum collocat, tantum videa-
tur habere rationem. Neque enim legi illi Senariorum se adeo astringit, ut
quoties visum sit, pedes alios ab iis, qui paribus, vel imparibus locis deben-
tur, vereatur sufficere. In his versibus, quos e Trachiniis Sophoclis Tuscula-
narum. 2. convertisse comperitur, partem aliam Senariorum legem servare,
aliam non servare comperias. Ex illo loco haec sunt:
Nec tantum invexit tristis Eurystheus mali. Item,
Haec me irretiuit veste furiali inscium. Item,
Si corpus clade horribili absumptum extabuit. Et,
Vrgensque graviter pulmonum haurit spiritus. Et,
Perge, aude nate, illachryma patris pestibus.9
In primo versu, spondaeus omnes sedes occupat, praeter ultimam, quae
iambo propria est. Secundo versu, quarto loco tribrachus est: caeteros locos
usurpat spondaeus. Tertio versu, dactylus tertium locum occupat, reliquos
spondaeus. Quarto versu, secunda sede tribrachus est, reliquis spondaeus.
Quinto versu, tertium locum dactylus occupat, caeteros spondaeus. Vlti-
mam semper excipio, quae iambo, ut dixi modo, propria est. Eadem libertate
gaudere voluit Erasmus in illis Hecuba, & Iphigenia Euripidis tragoediis.
Horum ego vicissim exemplo in convertendis Sophoclis tragoediis liberior
esse volui, tantumque operam mihi dandam putavi, ut parum de caeteris
sedibus sollicitus, iambus in ultimam caderet. Hoc eo dictum volui, ne quis
in demetiendis versibus aut ingenium suum torqueret, aut eo me culpandum
putaret, quod leges Senariorum & Dimetrorum minus me accurate secutum
fuisse iudicaret.
Dans les pieds pairs, on peut trouver des ïambes, des tribraques ou des
anapestes; par contre, dans les pieds impairs, on peut trouver égale-
ment des spondées et des dactyles. Cependant, Lalamant ajoute que les
comiques latins, en composant des dimètres et des sénaires iambiques,
ont fait preuve d’une grande licence, à tel point que la poésie de Térence
était très proche de la prose. Cicéron aussi fit preuve d’une grande liberté
9
Cicéron, Tusculanes, II, 8, 20; Sophocle, Trachiniennes, 1049-1053.
70 Elia Borza
quand il traduit quelques vers tirés des Trachiniennes de Sophocle.10

Lalamant examine alors la répartition des mètres dans les cinq vers qu’il
cite. Pour terminer la liste de ses exemples de composition latine versifiée
assez libre, il cite l’Hécube et l’Iphigénie d’Euripide traduites par Érasme.
Pour sa part, Lalamant s’est efforcé d’employer un ïambe au dernier pied.
Dans la préface de sa traduction des deux pièces d’Euripide, Érasme dit
qu’il a essayé de faire correspondre le plus possible les vers latins avec les
vers grecs, en reproduisant même la disposition:11
Maxime quod ad ceteras difficultates ipse prudens non mediocre pondus
adiecerim mea in vertendo religione, dum conor, quoad licet, Graecanici
poematis figuras quasique filum representare, dum versum versui, dum ver-
bum pene verbo reddere nitor, dum ubique sententiae vim ac pondus summa
cum fide Latinis auribus appendere studeo.
Plus loin, dans une page adressée ‘Ad lectorem’, Érasme donne des détails
supplémentaires concernant les mètres qu’il a utilisés. Il en donne la liste,
beaucoup plus étendue que celle de Lalamant, raison pour laquelle ce
dernier affirme avoir voulu être plus libre qu’Érasme:
De carminum generibus ut paucis obiter admonitus sis, lector optime: pri-
ma Hecubae scaena constat iambico trimetro, secunda anapaestico dime-
tro, nonnumquam intermixtis eiusdem formae monometris; quanquam hoc
metrum et dactylum recipit, aliquoties et proceleusmaticum, nonnumquam
et meris conficitur spondeis. […] Iphigeniae prima scaena constat iisdem
anapaesticis usque ad chorum Modo profecta, qui mistus est ex alcaico
composito ex iambica penthemimeri ac duobus dactylis, iambico dimetro
hypercatalectico, dactylico e dactylis duobus, ac totidem trochaeis, cho-
riambico dimetro, et eodem hypercatalectico, dactylico trimetro, glyconio,
dactylico dimetro, asclepiadeo, iambico monometro hypercatalecto, dacty-
lico dimetro hypercatalectico, iambico dimetro catalecto, pherecratio, iam-
bico acatalecto, iambico dimetro acephalo, iambico trimetro catalectico,
anapaestico trimetro hypercatalecto, adonio trimetro, trochaico monometro
hypercatalectico; deinde sequuntur iambica trimetra, paulo post a versu
Caeterum Menelae incipiunt trochaica tetrametra hypercatalecta.
En 1558, Naogeorgos publie sa traduction latine des sept tragédies, six

ans après l’Ajax et le Philoctète. Non seulement il ajoute les cinq autres
œuvres de Sophocle, mais il corrige ses travaux précédents. Les indica-
tions qu’il donne dans son Epistola nuncupatoria (pp. 5–6) à propos de
10
Cicéron, Tusculanes, II, 8, 20 ; Sophocle, Trachiniennes, 1049-1053.
11
Érasme, Euripidis Hecuba et Iphigenia Latinae factae Erasmo inteprete, ed. J. H.
Waszink, Préface, in Opera omnia Desideri Erasmi Roterodami, recognita et adnotatione
critica instructa notisque illustrata, Tome I, Vol.1 (Amsterdam, 1969), p. 218.
la métrique sont assez succinctes. Après avoir signalé que les scholies ne
sont pas toujours utiles pour comprendre le sens, Naogeorgos écrit qu’il
a rendu les parties dialoguées en trimètres iambiques, avec cinq mètres
possibles au premier et troisième pied: le dactyle, le tribraque, l’anapeste,
le spondée et l’ïambe; par contre, dans le quatrième pied, on n’a que
trois possibilités: le dactyle, le spondée et l’ïambe; enfin, dans les pieds
pairs, on a seulement l’ïambe ou le tribraque, sauf au dernier pied, qui
est un ïambe ou un pyrrhique. La situation dans les chœurs est différente:
Naogeorgos a utilisé des dimètres iambiques, ou bien trochaïques, ou bien
anapestiques — ceux-là mêmes que les anciens Grecs et Latins utilisèrent
dans leurs poésies; cependant, dans les anapestes, il a utilisé le dactyle
dans les pieds pairs:
Quanquam hercle fieri potest, ut non ubique sensum Poetae sim assecutus,
propter locorum quorundam, praesertim in Choris, affectatam obscurita-
tem, id tamen in iis factum locis puto, in quibus ne scholia quidem Graeca,
quibus usi sumus, suffragantur, certumque indicant sensum, sed variis in-
terpretationibus ambiguum faciunt quid sit sequendum.
Carminibus autem reddidi Iambicis trimetris, quae prima ac tertia sede
quinque pedes indifferenter recipiunt dactylum, tribrachum, anapaestum,
spondaeum & iambum, in quarto loco tres, dactylum, spondaeum & iam-
bum, in paribus autem locis, iambum duntaxat, aut tribrachum, praeter
ultimum, quem iambus solus, aut pyrrhichius obtinet. In Choris dimetris
usus sum partim Iambicis, partim Trochaicis, partim etiam Anapaesticis,
legitimisque illis, qualibus & veteres Graeci ac Latini usi sunt, Anapaes-
ticis exceptis, in quibus dactylo sum paribus in locis usus, praeter aliorum
consuetudinem. Atque hoc duntaxat in Aiace ac Philocteta factum est. Haec
ideo commemorare visum est, ut si quis versus examinare ac metiri velit,
habeat quid sequatur. Atque haec de mea opera ac studio dicta sufficiunt.
Enfin, Rataller compose un bref paragraphe intitulé ‘De ratione versuum’

(f. *5v). Dans ces quelques lignes, il explique quels mètres il a utilisés:
les trimètres iambiques acatalectiques. A la fin de l’Œdipe Roi, on trouve
quelques tétramètres trochaïques, comme dans l’Œdipe à Colone, et aussi
quelques hexamètres dans le Philoctète. Cependant, dans les chœurs,
à cause de la diversité de mètres employés par Sophocle, et à cause de
leur utilisation peu fréquente en latin, Rataller a exprimé sa traduction
dans des mètres plus fréquemment employés en poésie latine: l’anapeste,
le trochée, et d’autres du même type. Enfin, pour tout renseignement
complémentaire, Rataller renvoie au Περὶ μέτρων de Démétrius Triclinius:
De ratione carminum, quibus usus est Sophocles, non puto abs re fore, si
paucis admoneam, extra Choros vix alio genere, quam Iambicis Trimetris
Acatalecticis usum fuisse. Sub finem Oedipi Tyranni aliquot sunt versus
72 Elia Borza
Trochaici Tetrametri, ut etiam in Oedipo Colonaeo, & aliquot Hexametri in

Philoctete, quos ubique etiam nos reddidimus. In Choris ob varia, & Lati-
nis inusitata, & multa incognita genera, id praestare non licuit, sed ubi in
iis notare atque animadvertere potuimus Anapaestica, Trochaïca, & alia id
genus Latinis usitata, ac, pro eo atque in nobis fuit, expressimus. Qui autem
περὶ μέτρων, quae usurpat in Choris Sophocles, plenius erudiri desiderat, is,
quae huc pertinebunt, ex Demetrio Triclinio Graeco Grammatico petat, qui
opusculum ea de re editum reliquit.
Démétrius Triclinius, dans le Περὶ μέτρων imprimé par Adrien Turnèbe à

la suite de son édition de 1553, tient à peu près le même langage que les
trois traducteurs ci-dessus. En effet, le mètre iambique, dit le texte, dans
les pieds impairs (c’est-à-dire le premier, le troisième et le cinquième),
prend l’ïambe, le tribraque, le spondée, le dactyle ou l’anapeste; pour les
pieds pairs, on peut trouver l’ïambe, le tribraque ou l’anapeste. Quand le
mètre iambique est acatalectique, on trouve l’ïambe seul à la fin, ou bien le
pyrrhique si la syllabe est indifférente. Par contre, si le mètre est catalec-
tique, on aura un ïambe à la pénultième place, ou rarement un tribraque;
de cette façon, on a une clausule en amphibraque ou en bachique:
ΤΟ ΙΑΜΒΙΚΟΝ μέτρον δέξεται κατὰ μὲν τὰς περιττὰς χώρας, τοῦτ᾿ ἔστι
πρώτην, τρίτην, πέμπτην, ἴαμβον, τρίβραχην, σπονδεῖον, ἀνάπαιστον· κατὰ δὲ
τὰς ἀρτίους, τοῦτ᾿ ἔστι δευτέραν, τετάρτην, ἕκτην, ἴαμβον, καὶ τρίβραχην καὶ
ἀνάπαιστον· τοῦτον δὲ παρὰ τοῖς κωμικοῖς συνεξῶς, παρὰ δὲ τοῖς ἰαμβοποιοῖς καὶ
τραγικοῖς, σπανιώτερον· ὅτε μὲν οὖν ἀκατάληκτόν ἐστιν, ἐπὶ τῆς τελευταίας τὸν
ἴαμβον δέχεται μόνον, ἤ πυρρίχιον διὰ τὴν ἀδιάφορον· ὅτε δὲ καταληκτικὸν, τὸν
ἴαμβον παραλήγοντα, ἤ σπανίως τρίβραχην· ὥστε γίνεσθαι τὴν κατακλεῖδα, ἤτοι
ἀμφίβραχην, ἤ βακχεῖον.
En résumé, Lalamant suit de plus près la théorie de Triclinius rapportée

par Turnèbe en 1553. Par ailleurs, seul Rataller cite Triclinius: lui aussi
respecte donc les prescriptions imprimées par Turnèbe. Triclinius ajoute
cependant des éléments de versification concernant les vers catalectiques
et acatalectiques. Naogeorgos s’écarte le plus de Turnèbe, mais il faut
rappeler que ce dernier énonce des règles de versification grecque, presque
aveuglément suivies par Lalamant et Rataller, mais que ces humanistes
avaient à composer des sénaires iambiques en latin: les règles pouvaient
donc être différentes.12
12
Mon but n’est pas ici d’entamer une réflexion ou une étude approfondie de ce que
les humanistes connaissaient de la métrique grecque et latine. C’est pourquoi, pour toute
la problématique de la versification latine, on pourra consulter avec profit l’excellent
ouvrage de Jürgen Leonhardt paru en 1989, en particulier le chapitre consacré à la théorie
Pour conclure, cette traduction se différencie des autres travaux

rencontrés jusqu’à présent par le fait qu’elle a été rédigée en vers. L’effort
de Pazzi de réaliser un texte littéraire et poétique est évident, et son
souci d’utiliser en latin le trimètre iambique dans les dialogues montre
une bonne connaissance des deux langues. Ensuite, le texte latin s’écarte
parfois de l’original grec dans la lettre, mais pas dans l’esprit de la pièce
de Sophocle. Enfin, sans encenser outre mesure Alessandro Pazzi, cette
traduction, qui a la volonté d’être poétique, constitue un texte littéraire
de bonne qualité, tant au niveau de la langue latine que de la traduction
elle-même.
Alessandro Pazzi de’ Medici fut donc le premier humaniste à traduire
une partie des œuvres de Sophocle en vers latins, puisque sa traduction
date des années 1525. Il faudra attendre 1533 et l’Ajax de Jean Lonicer
pour que la première traduction latine versifiée soit imprimée. Cette
traduction resta manuscrite, par la volonté de l’auteur lui-même, et on
peut le regretter, car ce travail n’est pas sans qualités.
E-mail: elia.borza@uclouvain.be
métrique pendant la Renaissance italienne: J. Leonhardt, Dimensio syllabarum: Studien

zur lateinischen Prosodie- und Verslehre von der Spätantike bis zur frühen Renais-
sance (Göttingen, 1989), pp. 154–81. Cf. aussi E. Borza, Sophocles redivivus: la survie
de Sophocle en Italie au début du XVIe siècle. Éditions grecques, traductions latines et
vernaculaires, Kleos. Estemporaneo di studi e testi sulla fortuna dell’antico, 13 (Bari:
Levante Editori, 2007), pp. 129–33.
Howard B. Norland
John Foxe’s Apocalyptic Comedy,
Christus Triumphans
When John Foxe wrote his second Neo-Latin comedy, Christus Trium-
phans, for the academic stage, his personal circumstances were much
altered. In 1545, within a year of completing Titus et Gesippus, his
first play, Foxe, refusing to take holy orders, resigned his fellowship
at Magdalen College, Oxford, and two years later, in 1547, he married
Agnes Randall and published a translation of a sermon by Martin Luther.
However, it was meeting John Bale in 1548 that appears most clearly to
have altered the direction of his life. Ordained a deacon in June 1550 by
Nicholas Ridley, who became a celebrated martyr in Mary’s reign, Foxe
allied himself with Bale and other reformers who fled to the continent
after Mary came to the throne in 1553. Foxe left Ipswich in the spring
of 1554 to join the Marian exiles first in Holland and later in Frankfurt
and Strasburg, where in July 1554 he published his Commentarii rerum
in ecclesia gestarum, a Latin forerunner of Acts and Monuments. Appar-
ently inspired by John Bale’s Image of bothe Churches, published in three
parts between 1541 and 1547, Foxe developed a strong interest in church
history, especially in relation to the Apocalypse.
He moved on to the Marian exile community in Basle where he found
work with the printer Oporinus, and in March 1556 Oporinus published
Foxe’s Christus Triumphans. Clearly designed for an academic audience,
this play may have been performed at the University of Basle, but no
production is recorded. However, in 1561, the Marian exile Laurence
Humphrey, Foxe’s friend, who had become president of Magdalen, asked
Foxe’s permission to perform the drama at the college, yet again no record
exists of a production. It was performed, we are told, at Trinity College,
Cambridge, in 1562-63,1 though details of the production are unavailable.
The play was also translated into French by Jean Bienvenu of Geneva
in 1561; a relatively close translation into mainly rhymed couplets, this
version omits Act II, Scene 2 in which the comic figure Polyharpax
quarrels with Saul, and it adds a ‘petit discours de la maladie de la Messe’
1
F. S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914), p.
387.
76 Howard B. Norland
in five scenes in Act V. Some thirty years later, in 1590, another edition
of the play was printed in Nuremberg, and in 1672 the play was edited
as a school text, which was reissued in 1676.2 Foxe’s second comedy was
staged, apparently unlike his first, though its success appears to have been
limited. Yet its resurrection as a school text more than a century after
composition proves it was not forgotten.
Following two centuries of neglect Christus Triumphans was examined
in the context of sixteenth-century Neo-Latin drama in Germany by C. H.
Herford in 1886 and was judged to be inferior. Herford describes Foxe’s
drama as
crowded with unnecessary figures, confused in structure, unimaginative in
conception, and ultimately undignified and pedantic in style. […] far from
being comparable with the best of those doctissimae Germaniae comoe-
diae whose example he had somewhat ostentatiously set aside. […] he owed
if not the original suggestion, yet some hints in the execution, to the more
remarkable writer who had handled the Apocalypse before him.3
Herford is, of course, alluding to Thomas Kirchmeyer (Naogeorgus),

whose Pammachius (1536) represents the same apocalyptic subject matter
from the reformers’ perspective. Bale was so impressed by Kirchmeyer’s
play that he translated it into English, though the translation was appar-
ently never published and is lost. Clearly Foxe took as his dramatic model
Pammachius, which he may have seen at Christ’s College, Cambridge,
where it was performed in early 1545 before Foxe left Cambridge. Or
perhaps Bale suggested it to him; whatever led to Foxe’s imitation, Pamma-
chius was more a precedent than a direct source for Foxe. Herford notes a
number of parallel incidents in the two plays, but the details are different,
and as John Hazel Smith notes, ‘there are almost no verbal parallels
between the two plays.’4 Foxe seems intent on pursuing his own direction
rather than slavishly imitating an earlier well-known dramatic version of
the Apocalypse. The superiority of Kirchmeyer’s drama in comparison to
Foxe’s may be attested by its wider influence and higher regard, but Foxe’s
effort deserves a closer examination than it has received.
2
Two Latin Comedies by John Foxe the Martyrologist: Titus et Gesippus; Christus
Triumphans, ed. and trans. by John Hazel Smith (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1973), pp. 34-35. All further references to the text of Christus Triumphans are to this
edition and translation of the play; Smith’s commentary is denoted ‘Smith (ed.)’.
3
C. H. Herford, Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany in the
Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: University Press, 1886), p. 143.
4
Smith (ed.), Two Latin Comedies by John Foxe, pp. 43-44.
john Foxe’s Apocalyptic Comedy, christus triumphans77
Identifying Christus Triumphans as a ‘Comoedia Apocalyptica’, John

Foxe clearly indicates the type of drama he believes he has written. He
places it in the genre of comedy because it looks toward the marriage
of the bride Ecclesia (the Church) and the awaited Bridegroom, Christ.
Marriage, of course, is a traditional ending of comedy in the Roman
drama upon which Foxe had modelled his first play, Titus et Gesippus,5
and it became the required ending for the romantic comedies that followed
in the sixteenth century. Comedy had long implied a happy ending, in
contrast to the unhappy ending of tragedy in narrative as well as drama,
and it is in this sense that Dante titled his work The Divine Comedy. From
the perspective of the reformer the linking of apocalyptic with comedy
emphasises the victory over evil in the apocalypse, or in other words,
the fulfilment of the promise of redemption. To call the play a tragi-
comedy, as Marvin Herrick and John Hazel Smith suggest,6 misinterprets
the Christian message and Foxe’s perception of providence, as we shall
consider later. Because he believes he is writing a comedy, Foxe adopts
the colloquial style of Terence and Plautus, not the high style of Seneca
associated with tragedy, but perhaps even more important, Foxe repre-
sents the evil characters, such as Satan, Pseudamnus, and Pornapolis, as
more comic than threatening. Following in the tradition of the morality
plays and some of the cycle drama, the image of evil is more to be mocked
than feared, and the allegorical message remains more ideological than
realistically embodied; most of the characters are functional shadows
rather than full-bodied dramatic personae.
The Apocalypse was a central intellectual concern in western Europe
at the time that Foxe wrote Christus Triumphans. An uneasy expecta-
tion that the world was soon to end and the final judgment to occur may
have been provoked by a number of worrying developments. Richard
Bauckham suggests that what particularly prompted this expectation were
‘the Turkish threat to Europe, the sack of Rome in 1527, the discovery of
the New World, and above all the Protestant Reformation’.7 Social and
5
See my essay ‘Terence “Improved”? Form and Function in Foxe’s Titus et Gesippus’,
in Neo-Latin Drama and its Receptions, ed. by Jan Bloemendal and Philip Ford, Noctes
Neolatinae, Beihefte zum Neulateinischen Jahrbuch (2008), pp. 93-102.
6
See Marvin T. Herrick, Tragicomedy: Its Origin and Development in Italy, France,
and England, Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, 39 (Urbana, IL: University of
Illinois Press, 1955), pp. 61-62, and Smith (ed.), Two Latin Comedies by John Foxe, pp.
41-42.
7
Richard Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse: Sixteenth Century Apocalypticism, Millen-
narianism and the English Reformation: from John Bale to John Foxe and Thomas
Brightman (Abingdon: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1978), pp. 11-12.
religious unrest along with political conflicts fostered an uncertainty that

led to a re-examination of the apocalyptic prophecy. Based primarily on
the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation, the Protestant apoca-
lyptic tradition also drew upon the Prophecy of Elias, according to Kath-
erine Firth, ‘which encompassed and limited the duration of the world.
[…] It divided the history of the world in three great periods: the age
before the law, the age under the law, and the age of Messiah. To each age
was allocated 2,000 years.’8 The canonical Daniel and Revelation were
most important in providing the central images and interpretations of the
prophecies, upon which the Reformation commentators focused. Luther
found his first source ‘in his search for the meaning of the Antichrist’ in
Daniel,9 but for the Reformers the Antichrist quickly became the decep-
tive focus of evil in opposition to Christ that they identified with the Turk
and with the Pope. The Book of Revelation, although its apostolic basis
was questioned by Erasmus and other theologians, provided the memo-
rable icons of the four horsemen and the seven-headed beast graphically
portrayed in woodcuts of Protestant commentaries.
For Foxe it was, no doubt, Bale’s Image of bothe Churches which had
the first, if not the greatest, impact on his perception of the Apocalypse
as both history and prophecy. Meanwhile, Matthias Flacius Illyricus was
working in Magdeburg to produce the new Lutheran historiography, and
Jean Crespin in Geneva was busily creating a martyrology at about the
same time that Foxe began his life-long endeavour to catalogue Christian
martyrs. In the mid-1550s, when Foxe was composing Christus Trium-
phans, Heinrich Bullinger wrote and delivered a series of lectures on the
Apocalypse, which were collected and published in Basle in 1557. Firth
describes these sermons as dwelling upon ‘the revelation in the Apoca-
lypse of all pervading providence’, and ‘his emphasis upon the perse-
cuted as the true elect in each age gave support to the martyrologists of
Protestantism’.10 This extensive concern with the Apocalypse among the
Reformers during the reign of Queen Mary provides the historical context
for Foxe’s ‘apocalyptic comedy’; according to Firth, ‘for the development
of the apocalyptic tradition in Britain no six years were more important
than those from 1553 to 1559’.11
8
Katherine R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain 1530-1645
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 5.
9
Firth, Apocalyptic Tradition, p. 27.
10
11
Christus Triumphans is a dramatic interlude in Foxe’s career, after his

initial Latin versions of his martyrology and before his turn to English
as his language of communication, which acknowledged a more popular
rather than learned audience for his Acts and Monuments. However, this
play also anticipates his basic view of cosmic history that he represents
by merging allegorical form with historical and mythical persons. Foxe in
his prologue identifies himself as ‘Poeta novus’ (a new poet) and requests
that ‘spectatores novi’ (new spectators) remain silent ‘novam | Rem dum
spectandam profert in proscenium’ (while he brings onto the stage some-
thing new (Prologue, 1-4)). His emphasis on newness implies originality
and freshness, but he does not go as far as Milton does by declaring at the
beginning of Paradise Lost that he is dealing with ‘Things unattempted
yet in Prose or Rhyme’. Rather, Foxe insists that his presentation will
be different from the usual fare that his audience may encounter in the
theatre. He admits that the comedy may be long, and there may be ‘hiatus
et Lamas’ (gaps and bogs (Prologue, 38-39)), but its matter is large and
complex. Actually the play is about the same length as Titus et Gesippus,
even though its concept is completely different. Rather than focusing
upon a simple plot line, Foxe in Christus Triumphans offers a multiplicity
of characters, events, and situations. There is no concern here for the clas-
sical unities of time, place, or action. Instead the single unifying force is
prevailing providence in the sweep of cosmic history.
The play begins with two scenes representing female suffering. Recog-
nising some rightness in her suffering because she was ‘mali quae mater
fuerim et particeps’ (the mother of evil and a partner in it (I. 1. 24)),
Eve complains that Satan has enslaved her daughter Psyche. Mary arrives
shortly afterwards and laments that her son has been taken from her. The
two wailing women then compare their stories. Their colloquial Latin
dialogue reveals very human emotions of suspicion, annoyance, and
commiseration. Serving as a kind of induction to the play, these initial
scenes establish the human condition of suffering as well as the Christian
promise of redemption, as Eve remembers the prophecy that the seed of a
woman will tread upon the head of the serpent. The play then launches its
pervading conflict between good and evil.
Satan is introduced in a confused and comic state. Wondering where
he has fallen, he recalls the battle in heaven that he has lost and complains
that the outcome would have been different if some god had not inter-
vened. His own powerlessness is emphasised as he attempts to reassert
himself, but his exaggerated description of what he could do becomes

ludicrous:
Quod si monomachia
Mihi cum iis uelitandum esset angelis
Archangelisque, cherubicae ac seraphicae
Vna licet omnes accedant decuriae, hic
Aut si darentur praesto, ut his ego manibus,
Vnguibus ac calcibus raperem, rumperem, agerem,
Discerperem, ruerem, prosternerem,
Excerebrarem, elumbarem, funderem,
Truderem, tunderem, exossarem, denique
Insaltarem, pellerem, pulsarem, caederem.
(I. 3. 11-20)
(But if I’d been able to fight it out alone with those angels and archangels,
even if all the divisions of cherubs and seraphs joined in, or if they were
suddenly presented to me here, how I’d tear into them with these hands,
nails, and feet! I’d smash them and dash them and bash them and gash them
and mash them and crash them and hash them and thrash them and gnash
them and lash them and slash them; I’d rush them and push them and crush
them and squash them.)12
Satan’s comic bluster ends with the boast that he led one-third of the
stars from heaven, as Revelation 12. 4 expresses, and anticipating Milton,
Satan declares that he will reign on earth rather than serve in heaven.
However, his menace is short-lived as the resurrected Christ appears
leading Thanatus and the rescued Psyche. Satan describes himself as
‘Mirando, stupendo, insaniendo non sum apud me’ (so astonished and
stupefied and out of my senses that I’m beside myself (I. 4. 13)), and he
is forced to recognise that his dream of power on earth is curtailed. Foxe
represents Satan as powerless and ineffectual in his confrontation with
Christ, and the scene ends with Satan being comically beaten with a book
by Psyche. Christ then sentences Satan to a thousand years in chains.
Following contemporary apocalyptic theory, Foxe represents in general
terms the period of the Messiah that involves the persecution of the early
Christians in the Roman world, but he focuses on the positive dimensions
of the historical development. Raphael announces that while Satan is a
captive, his tyranny will be assumed by Pornapolis, who will extend his
12
Smith explains that in his translation he has ‘tried to render the tone rather than the
precise lexical sense of the passage’ (Smith (ed.), Two Latin Comedies by John Foxe, p.
245).
menace far and wide, yet the suffering world epitomised by Eve and Mary
will rejoice at what has happened (II. 1. 1-21). Acts II and III feature
the time of Christ, though Christ himself retires into the background
as the biblical figures of Peter and Paul briefly occupy centre stage in a
series of short scenes that introduce Satan’s evil collaborators – Nomo-
crates, Anabasius, Dioctes, and Pornapolis. Again the representatives of
evil are more comic than fearful, and the most fully developed dramatic
encounter is between Saul before leaving for Damascus and the corrupt
scribe Polyharpax (II. 5). Nearly seventy lines of dialogue are devoted
to the scribe’s attempt to trick Saul into paying him more money than
he deserves and ends with a physical exchange of blows. Very much in
the style of Plautus, this scene seems most inappropriate juxtaposed with
Paul’s conversion; it is no wonder that Foxe’s French translator, Bienvenu,
chose to omit this scene.
Some three-hundred years appear to elapse between Acts III and IV,
but in Foxe’s scheme of cosmic time what truly matters are particular
historical events that demonstrate the workings of divine providence. The
Roman persecution of Christians ends with the succession of Constan-
tine, whose victory over his enemies was predicted by a cross shining
from heaven, according to Eusebius. Providence offers assurance to the
believing Christian, Foxe indicates, but for the supporters of Satan who
await the return of their leader, they must play their parts not as they wish
but as they are set down for them. The divine plan for the evil-doers as
well as for the good is compared to comedies performed on the stage by
actors who must play the roles assigned to them, which emphasises their
powerlessness in the face of providence. Foxe puts this thought in Anaba-
sius’s speech to Dioctes:
[…] ut scena est, ita personam geras. Vt in
Comoediis haud eadem omnino drammata exeunt si haud sinit
Fabula, ita mundum hunc tecum choragium esse quoddam cogita,
Vbi non quid uelis, at quod imponitur, induendum est
(IV. 2. 25-28)
([…] play your part after the manner of the stage. As in comedies, plays
don’t end altogether the same if the story doesn’t permit it, so think of this
world as a sort of drama school [choragium], where you must play the role
not as you wish but as it’s assigned to you.)
This view also, of course, demonstrates Foxe’s self-conscious concept of

the playwright.
Satan’s return from captivity marks a new stage in Foxe’s dramatic

representation of historical time and a new strategy in Satan’s conflict
with Christ. After expressing disappointment in the feeble welcome he
receives from his followers, Satan describes a more seductive plan to win
the souls of mankind. It is in this context that Foxe introduces his contem-
porary world. Reminding the audience of his temptation of Christ in the
wilderness, Satan explains that he will offer man the Circean cup of life’s
pleasures, to which he will ‘mille addam ueneficiis praelitos | Honores,
dynasties, titulos celebres’ (add a thousand painted glories, worldly
empires, and distinguished titles (IV. 4. 49-50)). He promises ‘ipsos inter
se principes | committere scitum est. Bellum aut Turcis inferant’ (to set
the princes against each other. Or have them start a war on the Turks (IV.
4. 103-05)). In addition to provoking international conflict he will create
a false Ecclesia in the form of Pornapolis, who will poison men with her
cup of fornication. Pornapolis, Foxe’s portrayal of the apocalyptic Whore
of Babylon, is generally identified with the Catholic Church, though she
is also associated with the Antichrist, who can take many forms, inclu-
ding the Asian Mohammed (IV. 5. 9-10). These personifications of evil
represent a growing threat to Ecclesia and her children, Europus and
Africus, who are identified with the extended Church. It is at this stage,
near the end of Act IV, that Ecclesia confronts her enemies, Pseudamnus,
the Antichrist, and Pornapolis, the whore of Babylon, in a rare moment
of dramatic conflict. The act ends with Ecclesia being jeered as a heretic,
a schismatic, a Wycliffite, an Anabaptist, an Origenist, and a Walden-
sian, as she is led off to Bedlam, the London hospital for the insane. This
representation of the true apostolic church of the reformers as a brave but
overwhelmed woman assaulted by a Catholic mob of priests, canonists,
cardinals, monks, and their followers (IV. 8) vividly conveys for Foxe the
current situation in England.
In Act V Foxe becomes more specific. Satan appears to have gained the
upper hand, and his followers are assigned roles that promote his cause.
Adopylus is given the title ‘The Catholic’, identified with the King of
Spain after Pope Alexander VI’s bestowal of that title on Ferdinand in
1494; in Foxe’s contemporary context this title would suggest Philip II.13
More immediately (V. 2. 19-31), Satan’s cohort Psychephonus describes
the Oxford setting of the prison where Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer
were confined in March 1554. Latimer and Ridley were subsequently sent
to the Tower of London and were executed on 16 October 1555, at the
13
Smith (ed.), Two Latin Comedies by John Foxe, p. 327.
very time that Foxe was writing this play. Cranmer was executed in the
following year on 21 March. In the next scene, in a discussion among
Satan’s supporters, Foxe appears to allude to Philip II, Queen Mary Tudor,
and the Catholic Cardinal Reginald Pole, who succeeded the Protestant
Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury. The evil network that has emerged
in Foxe’s contemporary world is perceived as vicious but temporary, and
we are assured that divine providence will, in the end, prevail.
Foxe’s apocalyptic comedy concludes with the reuniting of Ecclesia
with her sons Europus and Africus. She describes herself as ‘Porro |
Vidua ac egens bonis omnibus ac patria exul | Mutilor, cui ad ultimam
nihil amplius possit | Miseriam accedere’ (I’m a widow, bereft of all
my goods, and an exile cut off from my country. To that last misery no
greater for me could be added (V. 4. 31-34)). Although this plaint may
suggest a sentimental Foxe projecting his own plight as a Marian exile, it
is followed by the resolution of the faithful, committed to peace and the
love of Christ. Expressing a pacifist doctrine in response to her suffering,
Ecclesia declares:
[………………….] Vis omnis
Facessat: minas in patientiam, uires in
Preces uertemus. Telum oratione una
Nullum potentius: machina ipsum haec perrumpit
Coelum. Illorum inferre est, nostrum ferre iniusta:
Sors quippe haec sanctorum, et uictoria est. Christi
Nisi aduentu, haec extingui bellua haud quita est:
Illi ergo trophaeum hoc permittemus integrum.
Nam ad me quidem quod attinet, sic inducor:
Quae fero, Christi causa quum fero, lubens ferre.
(V. 4. 49-58)
(All violence must end. We’ll change threats into patience, force into
prayers. No weapon is more powerful than a single prayer: this is an engine
which breaks through heaven itself. Their way is to inflict injustices, ours to
endure them: this indeed is the lot of saints and their victory. Except by the
coming of Christ, this beast cannot be destroyed. So we’ll let him have this
trophy untouched, because so far as I’m concerned I’m resolved to endure
willingly whatever I endure since I endure it for the sake of Christ.)
This Stoical perspective sums up Foxe’s attitude toward the conflict

between the forces of good and evil represented in this drama. He has no
doubt about the final outcome because he is convinced that divine provi-
dence will prevail. As he conveyed in his Acts and Monuments, suffering
is but a temporary trial of one’s faith.
The final scene of Christus Triumphans is based on Revelation, where

the New Jerusalem is compared to ‘a bride adorned for her husband’
(Revelation 21. 2) and the bride is identified as ‘the Lamb’s wife’ (21. 9).
Foxe represents the impending marriage of Ecclesia and Christ that will
occur when Christ returns triumphant at the apocalypse. The Chorus of
five virgins that prepare the bride for the wedding elaborate the ritual and
emphasise the imminence of Christ’s return, and in their epithalamium
they pray first for peace and then for eternal life. The play ends with the
actors and the audience awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom, but we
are assured in the last words: ‘[…] Agnus at uincet | Triumphans tandem
agnique sponsa, Pseudamno | Rumpantur licet ilia. Interim admoniti
uos: Vigilate prudenter precor’ ([…] the lamb will prevail, triumphant
at last, and the bride of the lamb, though her flanks be broken by Pseu-
damnus. Meantime be warned, be on your guard with prudence, I pray
(V. 5. 160-63)). Foxe’s apocalyptic comedy concludes on the eve of the
apocalypse, but the audience is advised to be ready for the final judgment,
which Foxe was convinced was imminent.
E-mail: hbnorland@talktalknet
Jeanine De Landtsheer
Lambertus Schenckelius’s Tragoedia(e)
Sanctae Catharinae
In the summer of 1588 Melchior Moretus (1573-1634), the eldest living

son of Johannes Moretus and Martine Plantin,1 left Antwerp to obtain his
degree of baccalaureus artium at the Collegium Acquicinctinum (Collège
d’Anchin) in Douai, which was run by the Jesuits.2 Meanwhile his brother
Balthasar (1574-1641), who was his junior by one year, continued his
humanities at the chapter school of Our Lady’s cathedral in Antwerp (the
so-called Papenschool), where Melchior had probably studied as well.3
Balthasar had by then moved to the classis tertia or syntaxis, in which
he was initiated in prosody and metrics and was expected to compose
his own Latin verses. Melchior kept up a lively correspondence with the
home front,4 especially with Balthasar. Both siblings were encouraged by
their father to keep in touch with each other, not only by writing letters
in prose but also in verse. At least part of this correspondence has been
preserved thanks to Balthasar, who between c. 4 September 1588 and 1
October 1592 composed a little album, an octavo of 45 leaves, collecting
1
His older brother Caspar (born 1572) died in Leiden in September 1583, when he was
visiting his grandfather, Christopher Plantin, in his mother’s company.
2
He would remain there until August 1592; some weeks later he matriculated in
Leuven. On Melchior’s studies in Douai, see D. Sacré, ‘Balthasar Moretus’ Conamina
poetica (1588-1592)’, in Ex Officina Plantiniana Moretorum. Studies over het druk-
kersgeslacht Moretus, ed. by M. de Schepper and F. de Nave (Antwerp: Antwerpsche
Bibliophielen, 1996 [= De Gulden Passer, 74 (1996)]), pp. 59-109 (esp. p. 77, n. 72).
3
One of Balthasar’s classmates for at least two years was Peter Paul Rubens. In later
years Balthasar did not hesitate to call upon this friendship and invite Rubens, who was
quite famous as a painter by then, to draw title pages or illustrations for some of the
most prestigious publications of the Officina Plantiniana. See Sacré, ‘Balthasar Moretus’
Conamina poetica’, p. 59, n. 2. Rubens collaborated, for instance, on the second edition
of Justus Lipsius’s edition of Seneca, which came from the press in 1615 (he improved
the title page, drew a new portrait of Lipsius, and made two full-page portraits of Seneca
himself, a bust and the so-called ‘Seneca in his bath-tub’). About twenty years later he was
asked to draw the title page of the beautiful edition of Lipsius’s Opera omnia, Balthasar’s
final tribute to his former tutor. The illustrations are described in J.R. Judson and C.
Van de Velde, Book Illustrations and Title-pages, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard,
21 (London: Harvey Miller; Philadelphia: Heydon & Son, 1978), pp. 154-63, nos 30-31
(Seneca, edn 1615) and pp. 301-303, no. 73 (Lipsius, Opera omnia, 1637).
4
Several of Melchior’s letters from that period are preserved in Antwerp, MPM
[Museum Plantin-Moretus], Arch. 89.
86 Jeanine De Landtsheer
53 letters and poems, all in Latin except for some Dutch verses in an
epitaph Balthasar’s cousin Franciscus Raphelengius, Jr composed for their
grandfather, Christopher Plantin (f. 16v, no. 22). Balthasar was the author
of the greater part of these texts, but he had also copied letters and verses
by Melchior, or by their cousins Franciscus and Justus Raphelengius. All
the poems are written either in dactylic hexameters or in elegiac couplets.
This booklet, now Arch. 202 in the Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp,
has been described in a rather general way by Maurits Sabbe5 and far
more exhaustively by Dirk Sacré almost three quarters of a century later.6
A few months after Melchior’s departure on 25 November 1588, Saint
Catherine’s day, the pupils at the Antwerp school performed a play about
the martyrdom and death of this saint, who had become most popular in
Catholic Countries since the Crusades.7 It is not clear whether Balthasar
was only a spectator, or was allowed to play an active part, but sometime
in the month of December he sent a lengthy description of the event in 61
dactylic hexameters to his brother in Douai:8
Schenkelii a pueris acta est comoedia nuper
de Sancta Catharina9 festo illius ipso,
supplicium quantum tulerit pro nomine Christi
ostendens. Quae autem sunt acta intellige quaedam.
(6-9)
In this introduction, the name of the author was mentioned: Schenkelius.

This Lambertus Thomas Schenkelius (’s-Hertogenbosch, 7 March 1547 -
after 1624) had been rector of the municipal school in Mechelen, where
he seems to have written several works intended for his pupils, as well as
some verses in true classical tradition.10 In the course of 1588, probably
5
See M. Sabbe, ‘De humanistische Opleiding van Plantin’s Kleinkinderen’, in M.
Sabbe, De Moretussen en hun Kring. Verspreide Opstellen (Antwerp: V. Resseler, 1928),
pp. 5-26.
6
Viz. the aforementioned ‘Balthasar Moretus’ Conamina poetica’. Appendix 1, pp.
99-105, lists the texts with their incipit, the author, the metre, and the date. In Appendix
3 the ‘full text of Balthasar’s clumsy poem’ (to quote p. 68, n. 38) about the performance
of Catharina is given.
7
Throughout the centuries girls in countries all over Europe were named after her in
a number of variants. She is also among the saints most regularly represented in paintings
from the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance.
8
See Antwerp, MPM, Arch. 202, ff. 4r-5r.
9
Metri causa, Catharina has twice a long a in its first syllable, as is also the case in
verse 12.
10
Among them a Grammaticae latinae breves et necessariae praeceptiones, tribus
libellis distinctae (Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1581), reissued several times. Schen-
Schenckelius’s tragoedia(e) sanctae catharinae87
during the summer holidays, he came to Antwerp, where he seemed to

have earned his living as a private teacher, and by providing lodgings to
students of the Jesuit College.11 That one’s pupils practise their Latin by
performing short conversations, while at the same time learning some
good manners or being encouraged to become pious and honest persons,
had already been the intention of Erasmus’s earliest colloquies. In the
course of the sixteenth century staging a play once or twice a year for a
somewhat larger audience, with doting parents and grandparents in the
first row, had become quite popular. Schenkelius obviously approved of
such activities, for in his Tabulae publicae scholae Mechliniensis, a text
published by Plantin in 1576, he had stated:
Singulis annis semel, ut minimum, aut bis commoedia vel tragoedia hone-
sta nullaque obscenitatis labe contaminata, bene Latina, pura et emendata
publice exhibetur: quae scilicet actoris formet linguam, spectantium capiat
oculos, aures oblectet audientium et simul mores erudiat.12
Balthasar Moretus’s account of Schenkelius’s Tragoedia Sanctae

Catharinae
In his verses Balthasar gives a summary of the play (without explicitly

discerning between the acts), adding time and again details about how
it was staged. After an introduction (Cum prologus sua dixisset, v. 10),
Jupiter appears on the scene with a group of other gods (presumably his
colleagues from Mount Olympus). Outraged because Catharina holds him
in contempt, he orders Mercurius to convey his rage to her:
kelius developed an apparently most successful mnemotechnical system, based on the

experience of an Irish monk, Patrick Lenan; from 1593 onwards Schenkelius travelled
around through the Netherlands, France and the Empire, to promote and sell his system.
According to an official statement (Brussels, Royal Library, VH 8847) Philip Rubens
was among his audience in Brussels in 1594. On him, see A. Roersch, in Biographie
nationale, 44 vols (Brussels: Thiry - van Buggenhoudt, 1866-1986), 21, coll. 686-91, and
E. Steenackers, ‘Lambert-Thomas Schenckels de Bois-le-Duc, recteur de la grande école
à Malines 1574-1588’, Handelingen van den Mechelschen Kring voor Oudheidkunde,
Letteren en Kunst, 36 (1931), 111-54.
11
There is no testimony that he taught at the ‘Papenschool’, so Balthasar (and perhaps
also Melchior, but for a very short time) might have had some extra lessons from him, as
is suggested by Sabbe, ‘De humanistische Opleiding van Plantin’s Kleinkinderen’, p. 11.
12
See F.G.C. Beterams, ‘Lambertus Thomas Schenckels en zijn Tabula Publicae
Scholae Mechliniensis. Bijdrage tot de studie van het humanisme’, in Handelingen van
den Mechelschen Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst, 52 (1948), 98-154, with
the text on p. 154. It is also quoted by Sacré, ‘Balthasar Moretus’ Conamina poetica’, p.
67.
procedit ineptus
Jupiter ex scaena,13 quoque magna caterva deorum
Jupiter et queritur quod Catharina peralma
seipsum contemnat, flammato cordeque mandat
Mercurio furiam infernalem ut mittat ad illam.
(10-14)
The young poet might have remembered his Vergil here, for magna
caterva deorum echoes magna comitante caterva (said of Laocoon in
Aeneid, II. 40); flammato corde is said of Juno in Aeneid, I. 50, and the
mission of Mercurius to Catharina reminds us of his mission to Aeneas in
Carthage in Aeneid, IV. 259-78.14 Next it is Catharina herself who sets the
action in motion by approaching Emperor15 Maxentius and accusing him
of idolatry. The emperor sends her to prison, where she is accompanied by
her nurse. Thereupon the well-known confrontation with the philosophers
is organised, by which Maxentius hopes to convince her. But the reverse
occurs and the philosophers are converted to Christianity. In his frustra-
tion the emperor condemns them to the stake.
Accedit virgo Regem, dein arguit illum
idolatriae16, caderet cum victima vanis
divis. Iratus Rex hanc ad carceris antrum
adduci iubet. Insequitur tunc nata puella
illam, quae nutrix erat huius virginis almae.
Illa autem melius quam alii sua paene cavebat.
Doctores quaerit Caesar Maxentius atrox
qui possint illam ad falsos pervertere17 divos.
Nonnullos reperit, sed convertuntur ab ipsa
ad Dominum Christum. Tunc Rex Maxentius illos
comburi iubet.
(15-25)
At this point Balthasar gives some information about the mise-en-scène:

to suggest a huge fire, a cloud of smoke was produced (‘in scaena tunc
13
The preposition seems somewhat out of place here; Balthasar means scaena as
‘coulisses’.
14
The Antwerp MPM still preserves Balthasar’s extensively annotated copy of Book
IV of the Aeneid published by his grandfather in 1575.
15
For convenience’s sake Balthasar always uses rex in his hexameters.
16
The correct form should be idololatriae, as emended by Sacré, ‘Balthasar Moretus’
Conamina poetica’, p. 108, n. 169.
17
Balthasar probably consciously opted for pervertere instead of convertere to stress
the fact that it would be an abjuration of the true faith. See also vv. 31 and 54.
cernitur ignis fumus’ (25-26)), although he does not mention how this
effect was achieved. In the next scene the audience was reminded of how
an angry Maxentius had Catharina flogged to break her persistence, and
how the scourges neither hurt her nor left any traces. Balthasar clearly
had some difficulty in adequately putting his ideas in a hexameter and
ends up with a rather obscure phrasing, caused by his somewhat clumsy
combining of fact and staging:
Virgo flagellatur tortoribus alma,
horrida sed simulant non se donare flagella
tortores, sed carnem attrectant molliter eius.
(26-28)
The next two verses are rather strange too; I interpret them in the following
way: Christ, still showing the horrible traces of his own suffering (ater18)
and accompanied by Peter and Paul, two other martyrs who had been
imprisoned, appeared to the virgin in her cell (eam visum vadit – literally,
‘went to see her’):
Christus eam visum vadit factus qui erat ater
cum Petroque‚ Pauloque, esset cum in carcere virgo.
(29-30)
When Catharina, in a third confrontation, remains constant in her faith

and refuses to worship the ancient gods, the emperor condemns her to be
broken on the wheel. An angel, however, answers her prayers and breaks
the wheel with his sword.
An sese vellet pervertere virgo rogatur;
crudeli Regi frustra mortemque minanti
illa negat constans Christumque relinquere nolit.
Adfertur rota, qua ipsam deiurare studerent.
Virginis at precibus sacris venit Angelus ecce
qui rumpit gladio.
(31-36)
At this point, Schenkelius himself appeared on the scene, roaring

Stupescite! This is followed by the scene in which the queen chides her
husband for his injustice and his cruel punishment, confessing that she too
has become a Christian.
18
Ater is used in a similar way to describe Hector in Vergil, Aeneid, II. 272.
Praeceptor protinus ipse

Schenckelius, clara tunc voce ‘Stupescite’ clamat.
Hic Regem obiurgat coniunx, Regina maritum,
immeritam cupiat quod dira morte perire
virginem et ingenue se Christiolam19 esse fatetur.
(36-40)
I am inclined to follow here the interpretation of Sabbe – who first

mentioned Balthasar’s poem – that Schenkelius himself played the part of
the angel, rather than the interpretation given by Sacré, who has Schenke-
lius’s interruption continued until fatetur (v. 40). According to Sacré the
author of the play intruded and addressed himself to the audience:
[…] Schenkelius had publicly drawn attention to the paradoxical nature of
the action on stage, stressing how strange it was that the emperor Maxentius’
wife complained about the tortures Catharina was put to, that she blamed
her husband for killing an innocent woman, and that she had been converted
to Christian faith by the young woman herself.20
I rather am inclined to believe that ‘Stupescite!’ should be understood

as a command by the angel to the executioners who were manipulating
the wheel, which then came to a stand-still and was broken.21 It is also
a more plausible solution for the following verses: according to Sacré’s
interpretation the empress can only bow her head and lose it, whereas if
Schenkelius’s intervention is integrated into the play and limited to his
Stupescite!, her role becomes more balanced and stronger by having her
personally speaking to her husband.
When the Emperor in a fit of rage condemns his wife to be beheaded,
Balthasar again offers some information about the staging (sed quo pacto
sit, percipe, factum, v. 42): it is possible that some kind of cabbage (or
even a pumpkin), which was probably cut with eyes, nose and mouth, was
put on the actor’s head.22 Some walkers-on took positions between the
victim and the audience, and as soon as the headsman had lowered his
sword, the ‘body’ was immediately covered with a coat or a cloth.
19
Sacré, ‘Balthasar Moretus’ Conamina poetica’, p. 68 and 109, completes to Chris-
ticola (literally: ‘worshipper of Christ’) which is definitely the commonly used word,
unless Balthasar was making an effort to coin a neologism, a (pitying) diminutive (‘a poor
Christian woman’) (p. 69).
20
Quoting ‘Balthasar Moretus’ Conamina poetica’, p. 68.
21
In classical Latin stupescere is only attested in the sense of ‘to become astonished’,
but it could be considered here a synonym of stupere or torpere.
22
I am grateful to Gilbert Tournoy for this interpretation.
Imperat uxoris caput a cervice recidi

tunc Caesar; sed quo pacto sit, percipe, factum.
Imponunt caulem capiti; circum ordine quodam
stant pueri. Tortor caulem tunc deiicit ense;
hoc facto, pueri super illam pallia iactant.
(41-45)
In the next scene an anonymous nobilis summus dux stands up for his
creed by confirming that he too had been converted to Christianity
by Catharina, whereupon Maxentius has him decapitated also (on this
occasion Balthasar gives no further details about the staging).
Nobilis hic summus dux Regem obiurgat eandem
ob causam audacter se Christigenamque fatetur.
Imperio Regis tunc decollatur et ipse –
hos ambos autem virgo converterat ante
ad Salvatorem veramque fidemque sacratam.
(46-50)
In the final act Maxentius decides to try a different approach by using

more flattering and charming words. When this change of policy has no
avail, he orders the executioner to sever Catharina’s head as well.
Tunc atrox blanditur ei rex virgini amice,
Ut si non duris, verbis moveatur amicis.
Nullius sed blanditiis ea virgo movetur,
nec sese cupit ad vanos pervertere divos.
Imperat hic decollari Maxentius illam.
(51-55)
The final verses concerning the play (when an angel and a walker-on
attempt to lift Catharina’s body) might be a reference to the commonly
accepted account that the body of the martyr was carried off by angels to
the desert of Sinai.
Angelus et quidam puer adsunt protinus, ecce,
qui cupiunt auferre illam, sed corporis illis
non vis talis erat. Quare illos adiuvat unus
lictor, virginis et facies tunc cernitur almae.
(56-59)
The Tragoedia Sanctae Catharinae preserved in Mechelen
Unfortunately, Balthasar’s summary is all that remains of this Antwerp

play. Yet in the Archive of the archiepiscopate of Mechelen – the city
where Schenkelius lived for about twelve years as teacher and headmaster
– the draft of an anonymous Tragoedia Catharinae is preserved among
a plethora of documents from the chapter of St Rombout’s cathedral. It
is obviously written in a late-sixteenth-century hand, and from time to
time the question has risen whether this play might be the one Balthasar
described in his poem.
Before examining the plot of this play and comparing it to the one
performed in Antwerp, let me give you some particularities of the manu-
script play. It contains 27 unnumbered leaves, written on both sides
mostly in a clear hand, with the occasional word or verse erased. The last
scene of the first act was added at a later stage, with (in its appropriate
place) the remark vide folio primo referring the reader to pages 1-2, where
indeed this scene is to be found even before the prologus. Only in the
second act is it hard to reconstruct parts of the text, since a great number
of verses or half verses have been substituted or scribbled between the
lines or in the margins. The play totals around 1340 verses; apart from
the prologus and the epilogus of eight verses each, it is divided into three
acts of seven, ten and five scenes respectively, the second act being almost
as long as Acts I and III together. Immediately before the epilogus the
author crossed out ten verses bearing the title Angeli quaerunt corpus
cantando et in montem Sinai auferunt. Except for a few passages acted
by a choir and written in Latin lyric metres, the play is entirely composed
in the common iambic trimeter. The third scene of Act II merely consists
of a musical intermezzo (Proinde canitur triumphus musice) to give the
audience some breathing space. Above each scene a survey of the main
points of the action are given, sometimes followed by an enumeration of
the characters occurring in it.
Balthasar’s information about the prologus limits itself to the very fact
that it had been recited. In the Mechelen manuscript the eight introduc-
tory verses inform us that the play is the work of a young poet, or at least
one who still has to make his name (novus poeta, v. 2); it was written to be
performed by students (per iuventutem novam, v. 1) for the benefit of the
audience (vos plurimum salvere, spectantes, iuvet, v. 5). After introducing
the modestia topos (Rogans benignis auribus verba excipi; | Siqua bona
sint tribui Deo; mala omnia | sibi, vv. 5-7), the inexperience of the poet is
stressed again (quia poeta est novus, v. 8).
A comparison of both plays indicates that on several occasions the

action of the manuscript play is interrupted by a monologue of a personi-
fied virtue commenting on the events. The fact that none of these inter-
mezzi are mentioned by Balthasar might suggest that they were not
included in the Antwerp play. Yet there are other more obvious and
decisive differences between both versions, as becomes clear from the
start. Balthasar’s play opens with a kind of council of the gods on Mount
Olympus; it is Jupiter who decides to revenge himself on Catharina
because of her contempt for the ancient pagan gods. In the Mechelen play
the fatal confrontation between the virgin and the ruler, who is called
Maximinus here, is initiated by Catharina, who addresses herself to the
emperor and accuses him of idolatry. The latter is vexed and orders her to
be sent to prison, where she is followed by her former nurse. The decree is
applauded by an exultant Idololatria (here the word occurs in its correct
form) and by the gentiles in Scenes 2 and 3. In the next scene Catharina
makes her appearance: she regrets Maximinus’s decree and decides to go
to him and argue with him, a confrontation described in Scene 5. In the
next scene Maximinus wants to take up the discussion once again. To no
avail, for he is still unable to convince Catharina, who provokes him to
have a thorough discussion about the ancient gods. The emperor is wary
of her intelligence and urges his philosophers to engage in the dispute.
Act I ends with a dialogue between Fortitudo and Sapientia, two char-
acters who return separately later on; they scorn the emperor promising
their support to Catharina. There is no question of arrest yet.
The first part of Act II in the Mechelen play agrees with the Antwerp
one: the philosophers are defeated in their confrontation with Catharina
and are converted to Christianity. At the emperor’s command they are
consigned to the stake. Only in the fourth scene a new aspect is intro-
duced: a lictor announces that once the fire had consumed itself, the
philosophers’ bodies were found intact. Hereupon Maximinus, in Scene
5, makes another attempt to win Catharina over to his point of view by
using the most persuasive words. Upon her refusal she is condemned to
be scourged and starved to death. Death by starvation is not a component
in Balthasar’s account, nor is the fact that the sovereign used his fine and
mellifluous words at this point.
Next comes the episode with the empress, but where Balthasar’s play
has her immediately addressing her husband and soon admitting to be a
Christian herself, the course of events in the Mechelen version is different.
Here she expresses her wish to visit Catharina and is promised access to
her by Porphirio, the prefect of the army. Meanwhile (Scene 7), the figure
of Fortitudo appears to encourage and comfort Catharina in prison, while

the latter thanks God for his blessings and benefits. When the empress
visits her in Scene 8, she is converted together with a few servants in her
retinue, as is Porphirio with some of his men. In Scene 9 we recognise
the account as given by Balthasar: when the emperor becomes aware that
Catharina is still alive he tries once more to persuade her. When he fails
he orders that she be tortured on the wheel. In the final scene of Act II a
furious Fortitudo delivers a monologue scolding Maximinus for his stub-
bornness.
Act III opens when the wheel is broken after a short prayer by
Catharina. In the second scene the empress admonishes her spouse to
forsake his punishment of the virgin and openly admits to being a Chris-
tian herself. Maximinus, incensed, gives orders for the tearing off of her
breasts (omitted in Baltahasar’s account) followed by her decapitation. In
the following scene Porphirio (to be identified with Balthasar’s nobilis
summus dux) steps forward declaring that he and his soldiers have been
converted as well. The action is interrupted by a monologue in which
Sapientia fulminates about Maximinus’s tyrannical behaviour. In the
final scene Catharina again rejects the gentle exhortations of the emperor
and is beheaded, with milk flowing from her neck instead of blood.
Conclusion
This survey shows that the plays differ on several decisive points, so that
one can readily accept that the play preserved in Mechelen was definitely
not the one performed in Antwerp. However, this does not rule out that
Schenkelius could have been its author as well: as Saint Catherine was
among the most popular of saints, he might have developed the same
subject more than once, depending on the number, the age, or the level of
his students. Hence as long as no autograph document of Schenkelius’s
turns up to match the hand of the manuscript, the question of the author-
ship remains open.
E-mail: Jeanine.Delandtsheer@arts.kuleuven.be
Michiel Verweij
The Terentius Christianus at work:
Cornelius Schonaeus as a Playwright
Among the authors of school drama Cornelius Schonaeus stands out for
various reasons. Where most schoolmasters wrote only one or two plays,
he wrote seventeen, and where most school plays have come down in a
single edition, his work knew a lasting success until the end of the 18th
century, a success which is suggested by the honorary title of his collected
plays: Terentius Christianus. In view of this situation it is to be wondered
that the dramatic and literary aspects of his work have been neglected
almost entirely.
Cornelius Schonaeus was born in the small town of Gouda in the
county of Holland in 1541.1 He studied at Leuven University before retur-
ning north, where he was appointed rector of the Latin school of Haarlem,
where he died in 1611. An important fact in his otherwise rather unre-
markable biography is that he remained a Catholic throughout his life.
Although he witnessed the transformation of his town and region into a
Calvinistic bulwark, he continued as rector of the school. His reputation
as a schoolmaster and an author probably saved his career.
Most of his seventeen plays were on biblical themes.2 As a playwright
he stood in a venerable tradition. Since the third decade of the sixteenth
century schoolmasters in the Low Countries had written plays with the
double pedagogical aim of instilling moral lessons and teaching good
1
On Schonaeus, see: H. van de Venne, Cornelius Schonaeus Goudanus (1540-1611).
Part 1 Leven en werk van de Christelijke Terentius. Nieuwe bijdragen tot de geschie-
denis van de Latijnse Scholen van Gouda, ’s-Gravenhage en Haarlem (Voorthuizen:
Florivallis, 2001); Part 2 Vriendenkring (2002); Part 3 Bibliography (2004; also published
as nos. 15.1, 15.2 and 15.3 in the Haerlem-reeks). The bibliography has also been published
previously as ‘Cornelius Schonaeus 1541-1611. A Bibliography of his Printed Works’,
Humanistica Lovaniensia, 32 (1983), 367-433; 33 (1984), 206-314; 34B (1985), 1-113; 35
(1986), 219-283. See also M. Verweij, Het thema Tobias in het Neolatijnse schooltoneel
in de Nederlanden in de 16de eeuw. De Tobaeus van Cornelius Schonaeus (1569) en de
Tobias van Petrus Vladeraccus (1598) (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of
Leuven, 1993), pp. 66-281.
2
The titles of these dramas are: Tobaeus, Nehemias, Saulus, Naaman, Iosephus,
Iuditha, Susanna, Daniel, Triumphus Christi, Typhlus, Pentecoste, Ananias, Baptistes,
Dyscoli, Pseudostratiotae, Cunae and Vitulus. The last four plays are not religious. Full
bibliographical details can be found in Van de Venne (see n. 1).
96 Michiel Verweij
Latin speech. If school drama played a role in the discussion of the

reformation in contemporary Germany, this was not the case in the Low
Countries. Most schoolmasters were decent Catholics in the service of
decent Catholic, though tolerant and certainly not fanatic, city govern-
ments. The religious discussion took place on other levels. Moreover, in
the second half of the sixteenth century, Protestants in the Low Countries
were not so much Lutherans as Calvinists, and the Calvinist preachers
were opposed to theatre in all its forms. It is then not to be wondered that
Schonaeus’s successors in Haarlem avoided anything relating to dramatic
performance.
From the beginning of the production of Neo-Latin school drama in
the Low Countries two main principles have been central to it. First,
language was based on Plautus and Terence. Secondly, most subjects were
borrowed from the Bible. The main reason for this choice of contents was
arguably the additional pedagogical use found in the biblical texts, not
so much an attitude of criticism towards classical literature, as has been
sometimes suggested.3 There is, however, a marked difference between
the way earlier playwrights handled these themes, and their treatment by
Schonaeus and his contemporaries: the earlier authors like Guilielmus
Gnapheus (1493-1568) and Macropedius (1486-1558), Schonaeus’s most
important predecessor in the Low Countries, were far more liberal,
including scenes set in taverns and brothels, seemingly without hesita-
tion; the overall atmosphere was freer, somewhat more optimistic, more
joyful, funnier, whereas school drama from the latter half of the sixteenth
century was far more serious. The tone typical of a secondary school that
is so prominent in an author like Macropedius is almost absent in Scho-
naeus: besides the growing importance of moralisation, the general tone
became more tragic than comic. This was undoubtedly due to the general
religious and political atmosphere of the time.
In this article I should like to discuss two aspects of Schonaeus’s work.
First the influence of Terence on his language and metre. Then the struc-
tural devices Schonaeus used to construct his plays: the latter perhaps
show less Terentian influence. In doing so, I hope to shed some light on
the actual way Schonaeus made use of Terence and of the classical tradi-
tion to write his plays, as well as on the differences between his plays
3
Cf. J.A. Parente, Religious Drama and the Humanist Tradition. Christian Theater in
Germany and in the Netherlands 1500-1680, Studies in the History of Christian Thought,
39 (Leiden: Brill, 1987), p. 7.
and this classical tradition. I will illustrate both aspects through a short
analysis of Schonaeus’s first play, the Tobaeus, from 1569.
When looking for Terentian or classical reminiscences, one should
distinguish between two major categories, the true quotations on the
one hand and formulas from comic language on the other. However, it is
not always easy to make an exact distinction. Schonaeus probably knew
Terence by heart; if not, he must have had a sort of notebook which he
was able to consult with an almost improbable degree of efficiency. In
the Tobaeus, a piece of 1828 lines, I have recognised 337 true quotations,
which is roughly one in every five lines. Apart from these quotations, one
finds many short expressions and formulas, which may very well have
been borrowed from ancient comedy, but which occur more frequently
in Plautus and Terence, so that an exact location is hard to give. To this
category belong expressions such as: curabitur (Tobaeus, l. 145), occidi,
quid ni? (l. 351), habeo quod mandem (l. 159), plane periit (l. 495), and so
on. Moreover, many of these expressions consist of only one word. To the
same class belong some typical grammatical phenomena, such as the use
of diminutives: for example, actiuncula (Tobaeus, l. 2 and 39), corpus-
culum (l. 235 and 1439), constitutiuncula (l. 290), adulescentulus (l. 33,
757, 1101, 1175, 1619, 1654 and 1807), pauxillulum (l. 1412); similarly the
replacement of the simple future by the futurum exactum, passive infini-
tives ending on -ier (e.g. epularier (Tobaeus, l. 250), ominarier (l. 370),
conviciarier (l. 527), tergiversarier (l. 1062), obliviscier (l. 483) etc.), the
use of archaic forms like siem, siet, faxit, ipsus, etc. All these forms, as
well as the frequent use of interjections, belong to comic language, in
the sense that they are archaic. Indeed, sixteenth-century humanists, in
recognising them as occurring mostly in Plautus and Terence, read them
as comic, so that most authors of school drama used these forms and
expressions essentially with the intention of giving their text a certain
comic flavour.
Schonaeus is somewhat different in the sense that apart from using
these expressions he employs many more elaborate quotations, which by
their size and special character are clearly recognisable as such. In that
sense, many passages of his work have a distinctly Terentian flavour. Of
course, the main problem here is the definition of the term ‘quotation’:
I would suggest that that term should refer to a combination of words
borrowed from a distinctly identifiable passage, that can or cannot have
been adapted to the new semantic or grammatical surroundings. There
is yet another problem for the identification: Schonaeus did not use our
98 Michiel Verweij
standard critical editions dating from the ninteenth or twentieth centuries.

In a number of cases it is clear that he quotes from a different state of the
text.4
While many passages have a clearly Terentian outlook, there are scenes
which have almost no comic allusions. In fact, and this may be of some
importance, most Terentian expressions occur in scenes of a lighter,
more mundane character, whereas monologues which serve to sketch a
character or to develop a moral consideration have a far more classical
appearance. Apparently, Schonaeus used his Terentian supply for specific
dramatic occasions, so that his style became adapted to the contents and
the purpose of the scene. This adaptation to decorum, with the general
characteristics of refinement, purity and charm, is exactly the qualifica-
tion critics have always attributed to Schonaeus’s model, Terence. Puns
and other linguistic toys are to be found far less in Schonaeus than in, for
example, Macropedius, who looked more at Plautus: in his quotations,
but also in the general atmosphere of his language and style, Schonaeus
is a Terentian.
The same Terentian vein can be seen in Schonaeus’s metrics. In general,
school drama can be divided into two categories: those with choruses and
those without. A chorus permits a larger number of pupils to participate,
to the potential gratification of both their parents and the school. In ancient
Roman comedy, however, the genre did not exist in its Neo-Latin form,
although the Plautine cantica may furnish a suggestion. Nevertheless,
many Neo-Latin playwrights, like Macropedius, used them. Schonaeus
is strictly Terentian in excluding choruses from his plays. Metre has a
second dimension. Neo-Latin playwrights had two options: either they
tried to imitate and use classical Roman metres or they replaced them
by a more simplified scheme, using iambic trimeters instead of senarii.
The latter was done by Macropedius, who wrote his pieces essentially
in iambic trimeters. The difference rests mainly in the substitutions of
the short syllables. Macropedius seems to have permitted a substitution
of the short syllable in an iambus only in the odd feet, thereby creating a
scheme of three double iambi, the last of which normally has to be a pure
iambus.5 Schonaeus, however, has substitutions in all cases. His metre
4
I would strongly recommend that editors of modern critical editions also pay atten-
tion to branches of manuscripts that do not seem important from a purely critical point
of view and to early printed editions. Most editions tend to focus on an approach of the
original text or on a manuscrit de base, but in cultural history it is the text in the form in
which it actually circulated that counts.
5
Cf. R.C. Engelberts, Georgius Macropedius. Bassarus (Tilburg: H. Gianotten,
1968), pp. 45-48; H.P.M. Puttiger, Georgius Macropedius’ Asotus, Bibliotheca Humani
is less regular than that of Macropedius, but more in line with classical
Roman comedy. Once again, he is more orthodoxly Terentian. Apart from
iambic senarii, one finds a number of different iambic and trochaic feet,
although there are some minor differences, such as the use of σκάζοντες or
the fact that Schonaeus’s iambic septenarii are not, as in Roman comedy,
catalectic octonarii, but real septenarii.
By way of an example I will analyse a fragment of Act II, Scene 4 from
the Tobaeus, a scene which shows a concentration of Terentian quota-
tions. As some scenes abound in these and other scenes do not, this scene
is not entirely representative of every aspect of Schonaeus’s style, but it
will serve to give an idea.
An Quid consolare me, fili? An quaequam usquam gentium
mulier aeque misera est? 590
Ti Bono animo esto. Misera
non est nisi quam sua culpa miseram facit.
An Eheu, nulli ego plura acerba esse arbitror
ex coniugio feminae unquam oblata quam mihi.
Ti Mater, lachrymas mitte et quoniam id fieri quod vis, non potest,
velis id quod possit. 595
An Non possum aedepol.
Ti Ah, potes:
in Deo omnis spes sit nobis.
An Recte tu quidem:
si modo qui nos respiciat, quisquam Deus est uspiam.
Ti Ah, non te cohibes, mater? Tene istud loqui!
Nonne grave crimen atque summa impietas est?
An Nisi
Deo invisi essemus, non nos ad hunc afflictaret modum. 600
Ti Atqui hinc ego nos illi curae esse auguror.
An Eandem quoque tuus pater mihi saepe cantiunculam
occinit. At pol quidem non adeo stulta sum
ut facile patiar id mihi persuaderier.
Ti Tamen hoc, mater, verum est et ipsa re experiere propediem. 605
stica et Reformatorica, 42 (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1988), pp. 129-132; M. Verweij, Petrus

Vladeraccus. Tobias (1598), Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia, 17 (Leuven: Leuven
University Press, 2001), pp. 59-60.
100 Michiel Verweij
An Ridiculum. Quid mihi nunc adfers, cur expectem aut sperem hoc
malum
aliquando in melius posse commutarier?
An Why are your trying to console me, my son? Or has there ever
been somewhere a
woman as miserable as me? 590
Ti Be of good cheer. Only she is miserable
who is so of her own fault.
An Oh, I don’t think that ever woman had more bitterness
from her marriage than I had.
Ti Mother, stop your tears and as things cannot be as you want,
want them as they can be. 595
An I cannot, really!
Ti Oh yes, you can:
all our hope is in God.
An You’re right:
if there is a God who looks at us.
Ti Oh, pull yourself together, mother! stop talking like that!
Isn’t this a grave sin and utter impiety?
An If God
didn’t hate us, he would not afflict us in this way. 600
Ti But I think that just for that he takes care of us.
An You sing the same singsong as your father.
But I am not that stupid
that I let myself be persuaded that easily.
Ti But that, mother, is true and you will see so for yourself very soon.605
An
Ridiculous. What can you offer me why I should hope or expect
that this bad luck
can ever be changed into something positive?
This scene gives a lively conversation between Anna, the wife of Tobit,
and her son Tobias, who is to leave home to retrieve some money which
had been given in deposit in Media. Tobit had become blind when fulfil-
ling his religious duties. Anna, his wife, has been thrown into doubting
everything, and the fact that she will be deprived of her son drives her
to the blackest despair. At first glance, such a scene does not seem very
fit to make use of comic material. However, apart from the two passive
infinitives on -ier: persuaderier (l. 604) and commutarier (l. 607) and the
diminituve cantiunculam (l. 602), one finds various expressions which
fall under the category of ‘comic language’ identified earlier in this essay:
bono animo es (l. 590) is a very frequent expression, both in Plautus and
Terence;6 recte is found very frequently in Roman comedy;7 ridiculum is
more of a problem, as it does occur twice in Terence (Phorm., 901 and Ad.,
676), but not in Plautus. In the last case we are hovering on the distinc-
tion between a proper quotation and a more general use of formulas, but
a large part of the problem is created by questions of definition, not of
contents. The same holds true for In deo omnis spes (l. 596), which has
two Terentian equivalents (Phorm., 139 and Ad., 455). In addition to these
observations, it should be noted that this passage literally abounds with
unequivocal Terentian quotations. Quid consolare me (l. 589) quotes Ter.,
Hec., 293: ‘quid consolare me? an quisquam usquam gentiumst aeque
miser?’; plura acerba (l. 592): Ter., Hec., 281: ‘nemini plura acerba credo
esse ex amore homini umquam oblata’; mater, lachrymas mitte (l. 594):
Ad., 335: ‘era, lacrumas mitte’; id fieri quod vis (l. 594): An., 305-306:
‘quaeso edepol, Charine, quoniam non potest id fieri quod vis, | id velis
quod possit’; non te cohibes (l. 598): Heaut., 919: ‘non tu te cohibes?’;
tene istud loqui (l. 598) matches exactly Heaut., 921; eandem cantiun-
culam occinit (l. 602): Phorm., 495: ‘cantilenam eandem canis’; verum
est et ipsa re (l. 605): Ad., 888: ‘atqui, Syre, hoc verumst et ipsa re expe-
riere propediem’; and lastly, quid mihi nunc adfers (l. 606): Phorm., 1025:
‘quid mi hic adfers quam ob rem exspectem aut sperem porro non fore?’.
Although this scene is not strictly representative of the play as a whole,
and is not found in the first edition of 1569, but occurs only from 1580
onwards, it demonstrates extremely clearly the Terentian interest; most
scenes are less rich in Terentian quotations.
If Schonaeus’s work gives the impression of being relatively classical
with regards to its language, the same can be said, in a way, of its struc-
ture. It is well known that ancient drama preferred not to show much
6
Plautus: Am., 671 and 1131; As., 638; Aul., 732 and 787; Cist., 73 and 591; Merc., 531;
Mil., 1143, 1206 and 1342; Rud., 679; Pseud., 322. Terence: Heaut., 822; Eun., 84; Phorm.,
965; Ad., 284, 511, 543 and 696.
7
Cf. G. Lodge, Lexicon Plautinum, 2 vols (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1962 = Leipzig:
Teubner, 1901-33), II, 536-537; P. McGlynn, Lexicon Terentianum, 2 vols (London and
Glasgow: Blackie, 1963-67), II, 122-23.
102 Michiel Verweij
action on the stage. Most events have already taken place and if some-
thing of importance occurs – better known, perhaps, in tragedy, but also
true for comedy – it is generally a messenger who tells the story. Thus in
Terence, most real action has taken place before the actual play begins:
the action on the stage limits itself to the dialogues of the actors. It is in
the field of human relations, of expectations, deceit, and deceptions that
Terentian comedy exists. This is different in Plautus, who is concerned
more with dramatic action. Whereas most of the earlier Neo-Latin school
drama, such as the early pieces of Macropedius, does not hesitate to
include some action in the scene, Schonaeus, in keeping with the general
influence of Terence, shows himself rather reluctant to do so. The problem
is, however, that unlike classical comedy where the dialogues were the
action, in a certain way, the Bible story is not essentially made up of witty
dialogues, but either of the story itself (that is, of action) or of moralising
and pious conversations and monologues. This results in the plays’ rather
static quality, which closer study and scrutiny reveals as, at least, partly
intentional. Schonaeus seems to represent a classical dramaturgy in which
the accent is on words, not deeds. In this, he is arguably far more modern
than both Macropedius and most of his contemporaries. This may partly
explain the longevity of Schonaeus’s appeal, which waned only towards
the end of the eighteenth century.
The most salient example in the Tobaeus of Schonaeus’s unwillingness
to present real action on the stage is the end of the play. The biblical book
of Tobit illustrates the reward of two persons who, despite their devotion
and observance of religious duties, have been victims of fate. Tobit has
become blind while burying a dead Jew, who had been murdered in the
street. He sends his son off to retrieve some money from an old friend
in Media. His son is accompanied by the archangel Raphael, who has
been sent by God to solve Tobit’s problems and Sara’s, a young woman
of Media whose seven bridegrooms have all been strangled by the demon
Asmodaeus. Raphael suggests that Tobias marry Sara. Through his
chastity Tobias finds a way to vanquish the demon. At the end of the story
Raphael reveals himself and all ends happily. Schonaeus omits this last
scene, which includes the healing of Tobit, and the revelation and ascen-
sion of Raphael into heaven. The play closes with the announcement of
what will happen within (that is, offstage), but the actual fulfilling of this
prophecy is not shown – the play misses its end. Perhaps this was done
partly to avoid religious problems in view of the Calvinist minority and
the delicate situation of Haarlem in those days, but when the play was
presented for the first time, Haarlem was officially still a Catholic town.
In the original edition of 1569 there is a final scene which disappeared
in subsequent editions (1580, 1592 and 1598), in which a servant relates
Tobit’s final healing and Raphael’s revelation. But even there, nothing is
shown, and the play ends with a messenger’s tale. In the later editions,
and that has become the state of the text as it spread over Europe, the play
ends lacking even this tale, but only with the prophecy of Tobit’s healing.
A similar situation is seen in the defeat of Asmodaeus in the beginning
of Act IV. Schonaeus shows the young couple praying just before they go
to sleep (IV, 1). Then Raguel, Sara’s father, makes his appearance and
bewails his decision to give his daughter to young Tobias (IV, 2), whereas
in the following scene Raguel’s wife sends a servant to see if all is well
(IV, 3). Asmodaeus does not appear in the play. When Petrus Vlade
raccus (1571-1618) dramatised the same story thirty years later (Tobias,
1598), he presented this part of the story in a very different manner. In
Vladeraccus’s play, Asmodaeus is shown three times in the guise of a
hideous monster and his defeat is shown vigorously, with Raphael binding
him with chains. Clearly, Schonaeus’s reluctance to present anything so
dramatic seems a deliberate choice.
Instead of this captivating action, Schonaeus attempts to build his story
on the characters of his protagonists. In the Tobaeus, he stresses three
figures using two techniques. To begin with the techniques: a third of the
Tobaeus consists of monologues, an indication of its tendency to more
static drama. These monologues are sometimes dramatically motivated,
as the story of a messenger or a protagonist who relates (rather than acts)
an event from the story. In other cases these monologues serve to develop
a point of moralisation or to develop a character by giving his or her
inmost thoughts and feelings. It is not always easy to draw a clear line,
as these thoughts may serve for moralisation as well. A second technique
used by Schonaeus is what one could call a discussion scene, in which
two protagonists stand opposed to one another and have a fierce argument
about the situation. In these scenes elements of moralisation are often part
of the purpose: the articulation of contrasting views allows the author to
develop various issues linked with them and to enliven this development
through the debate. These scenes are among the most enjoyable for us,
but sometimes Schonaeus lightly modified the characters of the various
figures to make them more suitable for his purpose.
One of the characteristics of Terence’s plays is that the action emerges
from the characters of his dramatic figures. Schonaeus is at least partly
104 Michiel Verweij
successful in his imitation of this. However, it often seems that the deve-
lopment of the character tends to replace any real action, an effect, no
doubt, in part due to one-third of the play being monologue. Consider
that of Raguel during the night after the wedding of Tobias and Sara, for
example: here, Raguel, who often delivers monologues, utters his doubts
and his sense of guilt for having permitted the wedding which is bound
to have a bad end. Raguel appears to be of a rather weak disposition,
doubtful and grief stricken because of what happened to his daughter
(who is on stage far less). It is through his complaints that we see the deve-
lopment of this element of the biblical story, while the countering of this
complaint gives fuller weight to the successful end of the bridegroom’s
night. Raguel creates a kind of suspension in his monologues, which is
then relieved by the real end. In the same way we see Tobaeus (the father)
offering his devout monologues, which not only have a moralising end in
themselves but also function structurally to sharpen anticipation of the
outcome in the audience – it knows that God never punishes the good
and rewards the bad. These moralising monologues are a proper starting
point for the story, just because they reflect the high moral and religious
standards of the protagonist.
In contrast, the character of Tobaeus’s wife, Anna, has been deve-
loped in a different way. Like Raguel, she is less significant in the biblical
account, but Schonaeus has seized on her dramatic potential, although he
changes her character slightly. In the Bible, Anna goes out to work after
Tobit has been blinded; one day she brings back a little he-goat which
she has received, but Tobit reproaches her for it, as he thinks it had been
stolen. Then Anna pours forth her anger, reproaching him that he is only
righteous in other men’s eyes. In the Tobaeus, however, the episode of
the little he-goat has been dropped: Anna is a negative counterpoint to
Tobaeus, whom she reproaches for the apparent fruitlessness of his devout
conduct. If Anna could be said to be right in some respect in the Bible,
in the Tobaeus she certainly is not. Even if one could argue that her main
drive in the rest of the story is the love for her son, Tobias, this is not
presented as unequivocally positive. This is reflected very clearly by the
fact that Tobias junior, on his return home, runs to his father and almost
completely neglects his mother. The character of Anna is developed either
in her monologues, when she is heaving deep sighs for Tobias’s return, or
in sharp dialogues with her son or her husband.
In this way, Schonaeus manages to use certain figures as central
elements in his play and, what is still more important, as structural devices.
Tobaeus is the central figure of Act I, whereas the continuous presence of

Anna unifies Act II and parts of Acts I and V, and Raguel dominates
Acts III and IV, as well as other parts of Act V. Such unifying figures are
essential in a play that dramatises a biblical story lacking the three clas-
sical unities. The book of Tobit relates a journey, which by that fact alone
transgresses the unities of place and time, whereas the double thread of
the stories of Tobit and Sara violates the unity of action. Although it is
true that these unities were not strictly observed in the sixteenth century,
my point is that the story of the book of Tobit is so opposed to any drama-
tisation of classical inspiration that Schonaeus had to make some serious
efforts to preserve any form of theatrical unity. It pleads in favour of his
talent that he succeeded to any degree in this, his first play.
The Tobaeus was to be followed by 16 more plays. Schonaeus would
continue to work along the same lines, combining good Terentian Latin
with moralising content in plays built on the development of charac-
ters rather than action. Sometimes the story he chooses is insufficiently
dramatic, but in the Tobaeus this is no problem. Schonaeus was known
then, as now, as the Terentius Christianus. That he earned this title mostly
on account of his systematic use of Terentian phrases and expressions,
both in the form of more or less typically comic expressions and real
quotations, has been understood for some time. However, an analysis of
the means he used to attain his dramatic ends shows that he was a clas-
sicist in other fields of the art of drama as well. His use of character, his
reluctance to show fervent or vigorous action on the stage, his preference
for words, both in monologues and in sometimes vehement dispute, show
him equally to be a Terentian playwright who shared many more of his
model’s characteristics. The difference essentially lies in the moralising
trend and in a more static nature of his plays. In comparison with his
predecessors in the field of Neo-Latin school drama, he can even appear
remarkably modern, and was considered so for a long time.
E-mail: michiel.verweij@kbr.be
Joaquín Pascual Barea*
School Progymnasmata and Latin Drama:
thesis, refutatio, confirmatio and laus
in the Dialogue
on the Conception of Our Lady (1578)
by the Spanish Jesuit Bartholomaeus Bravo
(1553 or 1554–1607)
The Library of the Royal Academy of History at Madrid holds the single
handwritten copy, unfortunately full of misreadings, of a dialogue on the
Conception of Our Lady by Father Bravo.1 This author has been identi-
fied as Bartholomaeus Bravo, who published more didactic books than
any other Jesuit teacher ever.2 The work also could have been written
either by Johannes Bravo (1535–1594), who enrolled in the Society of
Jesus in 1555; or by Petrus Bravo, a nephew of Bartholomaeus, or else by
any other contemporary priest called Bravo. However, the following facts
corroborate the attribution of the dialogue to Bartholomaeus Bravo.
The volume which contains this dialogue also includes other plays
written in Bartholomaeus Bravo’s times, and many of them are related to
cities and towns of the province of Castile where he lived, such as Segovia,
the town where he wrote a number of letters to his pupils and where his
treatises on letter writing and on progymnasmata were reprinted in 1591;
Valladolid, the hometown of his pupil Ferdinandus; or Alcalá de Henares,
where some of his pupils continued their studies.3 On the other hand, more
conclusively, the dialogue was composed and performed at Monterrey, a
Spanish town near the northern border of Portugal, since the parish of
* The research carried out for the writing of this essay was supported by the Ministry
of Science and Innovation of Spain through the Project of I+D+i FFI2009-10133 of the
DGICYT, and by the General Secretariat of Universities of the Ministry of Education
through the Project ‘Neo-Latin Drama in Renaissance Spain: Classical Tradition and
Modernity’ (PR2010-0317).
1
Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia, MS. 9/2566, ff. 71r–84v. It was mentioned by
Cayo González Gutiérrez, El teatro escolar de los jesuitas (1555–1640) (Oviedo: Univer-
sity of Oviedo, 1997), pp. 349–351.
2
Cf. Jesús Menéndez Peláez, Los Jesuitas y el teatro en el Siglo de Oro (Gijón:
University of Oviedo, 1995), p. 450.
3
We know this from his printed letters: Liber de conscribendis Epistolis cum exem-
plaribus cuiusque generis Epistolarum. Item Epistolarum libri tres quibus virtutis
doctrina iuventuti accommodata continetur (Burgos: Philippus Iunta, 1601).
108 Joaquín Pascual Barea
Albarillos (also called Albarellos de Monterrei in the native language),

as well as the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Remedies, which is only four
kilometres away from Monterrey, are mentioned in the play. And Petrus
Guerra, director of the Jesuit School of Monterrey, informed on 9 January
1579 that the Congregation of Our Lady had been founded on 8 December
1578, the day of the feast of her Conception, and that a comic dialogue
made clear on the same day how important it was for a Christian man to
devote himself to Our Lady.4
Father Bravo’s dialogue concludes with the foundation of the Congre-
gation of Our Lady of the Conception in the School of Monterrey, and
tells of the Virgin’s help to people devout to her, which fits exactly the
plot of the dialogue performed in 1578. Therefore, it is very likely that this
play was performed that day by the pupils of the school of the Society of
Jesus before the citizens of the town of Monterrey.
This date also coincides with Bartholomaeus Bravo’s first years of
teaching, when he was about twenty-three years old, since he enrolled
in the Society of Jesus in Salamanca in 1572, and after completing at
least two years of apprenticeship in Villagarcía de Campos, he would
have spent a few years teaching in Monterrey. At least, the custom of the
Society in the province of Castile was to send new teachers to Monterrey
to practise during their first years.5 So in 1578, four years later, he could
be as acquainted with the social and religious atmosphere of the region as
Father Bravo, the author of this dialogue, proves to be.
The work is neither a comedy nor a tragedy, but it belongs rather to a
dramatic genre frequently cultivated in the Spanish schools of the Society
from the mid-sixteenth century, which derived from humanistic comedy
and from other earlier scholarly dramas, and with specific didactic and
literary purposes and moral objectives. This kind of performance obeys a
practice of the Jesuits with regard to the teaching of Rhetoric and Poetics,
who encouraged the pupils of their schools to celebrate with great pomp
a feast of the Virgin with speeches, poems, emblems, and other exercises,
at least once every year.
The Jesuit author wrote the dialogue on the Conception of Our Lady
alternating verse with prose and Latin with Spanish: from its twenty-eight
4
Cf. Evaristo Rivera Vázquez, Galicia y los jesuitas: sus colegios y enseñanza en los
siglos XVI al XVIII (La Coruña: Colección ‘Galicia Histórica’, 1989), p. 182.
5
I have dealt with the life and works of Bartholomaeus Bravo in the introduction
to my critical edition and translation of his Liber de Arte Poetica (Alcañiz: Instituto de
Estudios Humanísticos, forthcoming).
School Progymnasmata and Latin Drama 109
pages, only nine are written in Latin while nineteen pages are written in
Spanish, and just ten pages are written in verse while eighteen are written
in prose, so that seven pages are written in Latin prose, in two scenes of
three and a half pages each. From these two scenes, we shall refer to two
and a half pages from the first scene, and to a page from the second one,
showing that they are progymnasmata exercises rather than parts of a
common drama.
It is not really difficult to analyse these scenes from the point of view of
the theory of Bartholomaeus Bravo’s book on Progymnasmata or ‘preli-
minary exercises’ of Oratory, which was published about ten years after
this dialogue had been written.6 This treatise is based on the works of
other ancient and modern authors, but it also takes into account the conclu-
sions of Bravo’s own experiences as a teacher. This experience included
the performance of this or at least of similar plays by his pupils. So by
bringing together the literary precepts and such a composition written
probably by the same person, we can easily observe the interactions of
theory and practice in this matter.
The whole dialogue is a kind of narratio or ‘story’, since Bravo’s
treatise on progymnasmata also includes the comedies within the third
kind of narratio. Like all dramas, it is also an exercise of prosopopoeia
or ‘personification’, since it is entirely written in direct speech. More
specifically, the texts we are dealing with contain an example of the four
progymnasmata maiora (‘major exercises’): sententia (‘proverb’), refu-
tatio (‘objection’), confirmatio (‘confirmation’) and laus (‘praise’), which
comprise the three kinds of rhetoric: deliberative (sententia), forensic
(refutatio and confirmatio), and epideictic (laus). Besides this, two major
exercises (progymnasmata maiora) such as sententia and laus may also
include elements from minor exercises (progymnasmata minora), namely
thesis (‘thesis’) and comparatio (‘comparison’).
In the first scene in Latin prose, two children explain a sententia from
Seneca’s seventieth moral letter to Lucilius (Seneca, Epistulae 70. 3)7 in
exactly the same way that Bartholomaeus Bravo tells us in his treatise
6
Progymnasmata siue praeexercitationes Oratoriae, cum singulis cuiusque progym-
nasmatis exemplaribus (Pamplona: Thoma Porralis, 1589). The work was edited in
Segovia by Petrus Rhemensis in 1591, and its contents were later included in Bravo’s
treatise De arte oratoria ac de eiusdem exercendae ratione Tullianaque imitatione, varia
ad res singulas adhibita exemplorum copia libri quinque (Medina del Campo: Iacobus
a Canto, 1596).
7
A pupil in the Dialogue calls Seneca a ‘wonderful storehouse of proverbs’ (senten-
tiarum thesaurus admirabilis).
on progymnasmata that a proverb or sententia should be explained. The

passage also contains all the conventional parts of this kind of exercise
in the same order that Bravo teaches schoolboys in his treatise on how to
comment on a well known proverb of Plato: the expositio or ‘exposition’
(ut optandum …), the causa or ‘reason’ (nam ...), a simile or ‘comparison’
of life with navigation (quemadmodum ...) and a contrarium or ‘contrary’
of childhood, which is adolescence. Two exempla or ‘examples’ come
next, which are drawn from the experience of the boys (in me ipse …
expertus ...). As was to be expected from the theory, a testimonium or
‘testimony’ follows, which confirms Seneca’s sententia with two lines
of Virgil (Georgics III. 66–67). The epilogus or ‘epilogue’ is preceded
by the arrival of a third pupil, whose name is Johannes, who asks the
younger boys about the subject of their conversation. After a short answer
by the first pupil, Johannes repeats his question and the second boy tells
him that they were missing their recently passed childhood, since it was
the best age in a man’s life according to Virgil and other ancient authors.
This gives rise to a discussion on whether childhood or adolescence
is the happiest age in a man’s life. The discussion includes and mixes
the progymnasmata called refutatio and confirmatio, which is the way
Bartholomaeus writes in his treatise that it should be practised at school.
Since it is a dialogue, each oratorical exercise does not include all its parts
nor are they set out one after the other. Once the discussion has been
introduced (discutiamus …), Johannes explains his opinion in opposition
to Virgil’s statement (refutationis expositio). Then, one of the younger
boys confirms Virgil’s opinion, including in his speech the main parts
of a confirmation: praise of the very learned (doctissimus) Varro, who
had divided man’s life into ages;8 the exposition of the opinion that only
childhood is the first age, and therefore the best according to Virgil; and
five arguments to prove it. Johannes continues his refutation previously
explained with three typical arguments: the interpretation of Virgil’s
verses by the young boy is not clear to him; that interpretation is incre-
dible, impossible, and useless, and finally it is incoherent. Nevertheless,
a second pupil tries then to confirm the point of view of his schoolfellow
and to refute Johannes’ opinion.
Fifteen pages written in Spanish precede one page in Latin verse and
two pages of a conversation showing the practice of colloquial Latin,
which introduce a brief laudatory speech in praise of the Virgin. It is deli-
8
According to Servius in his commentary on Virgil, Aeneid V. 295.
School Progymnasmata and Latin Drama 111
vered by an older fourth boy, who is asked by Johannes and by the first
two children to tell them how he has changed his life, and finally to praise
the Virgin’s excellence. This speech of praise also fits in with oratorical
and pedagogical theory, categories and methods which Bravo points out
in his treatise about the progymnasma called laus, to which it belongs,
and whose precepts concerning the parts and the arguments of any praise
he follows very closely.
The exordium is based on all the possible circumstances proposed in
the treatise: the subject (magnam provinciam ...), the speaker (mihi ...),
the audience (imponitis …), the person who is praised (Virginem ...), and
the day, since praise of the Virgin takes place the day of the feast of
her Conception, 8 December. As was to be expected from the treatise,
the argumentation is based on a comparison with illustrious men: while
the saints mentioned receive veneration on account of a single virtue, all
virtues meet in the Virgin to a higher degree. This includes the count of
ten or more virtues and of several saints. As the treatise on progymnas-
mata states, the conclusion (itaque … qua re) contains a summing up of
the argumentation and the request to imitate the Virgin, not only by the
speakers but also by other men.
Our literary analysis of the dialogue from the point of view of the
treatise of progymnasmata or ‘preliminary exercises’ of Oratory written
by Bartholomaeus Bravo confirms his authorship of the play, since it
looks more like an occasional composition by a Latin teacher than a play
by an experienced dramatist.
The mixture of Latin and Spanish as well as of prose and verse are
characteristic features of Spanish Jesuit dramas, as in Johannes Bonifa-
tius’s plays performed in the schools of the province of Castile from 1560,
and preserved in MS. 9/2565, which belongs to the same collection as Ms.
9/2566 containing our dialogue. Bartholomaeus Bravo might have been
Bonifatius’s pupil, and the dialogue imitates in many respects the style,
the Latin and Spanish metres, the characters, and the typically realistic
scenes of Bonifatius’s plays.9 The allegorical characters Devotion and
Zeal, who represent devotion to the Virgin and fervour in her love and
service, are also present in the plays written by Bonifatius. But the excerpts
from Bravo’s play that we have commented on have some specific gram-
matical and rhetorical purposes, which are hardly found in other plays of
the Spanish Renaissance.
9
Cf. Cayo González Gutiérrez, El Códice de Villagarcía del P. Juan Bonifacio
(Madrid: UNED, 2001).
We have illustrated this by deconstructing two excerpts of the dialogue

and by indicating how they fit Bravo’s rules in his treatise on Progymnas-
mata, particularly those of sententia, confirmatio, refutatio and laus. We
may thus conclude that these are not real dramatic texts by an author of
comedies or tragedies, and that they are particularly interesting in their
school context, since they are ideal school exercises giving a pattern for
boys’ learning, for whom they are written.10 They are also good examples
of what the teacher could expect from the exercises assigned to his pupils.
Though the story of this play is a fiction, it shows a real pattern of life to
the boys, and its end meets reality, since it tells of the foundation of the
congregation by the pupils which actually took place that same day. At
the same time, while performed before the citizens of Monterrey, this
play aims at showing the piety, erudition and talent of the boys who were
educated in the Jesuit schools.
E-mail: joaquin.pascual@uca.es
10
The same conclusion may be inferred from an analysis of the Latin and Spanish
poems included in this dialogue with regard to the theory of Bartholomaus’ treatise on
Poetics and Oratory. Cf. Joaquín Pascual Barea, ‘El Diálogo de la Concepción de Nuestra
Señora del Padre Bravo a la luz de los libros De Arte Poetica y De Arte Oratoria de Barto-
lomé Bravo’, in Pectora mulcet: Estudios de retórica y oratoria. Ed. T. Arcos Pereira –
J. Fernández López – F. Moya del Baño (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 2009),
pp. 1143-1155.
Judi Loach
Performing in Latin in Jesuit-run
colleges in mid- to late-17th-century
France: Why, and with what consequences?
Introduction
In France the latter half of the seventeenth century was the period that
witnessed greater production of Latin-language drama than any other.
The purpose of this paper is to consider that drama within its contem-
porary context: why such drama proliferated there and then; its authors’
and producers’ intentions, and how these affected its character; how
performances were experienced by actors and perceived by specta-
tors. The paper will explain why Latin was employed so extensively for
dramatic purposes, at the very moment when the conscious refinement of
the French language had led to this vernacular language being deemed
sufficiently elegant for literary purposes; and it will thereby suggest why
this Latin-language drama made so little effect upon seventeenth-century
French theatre.
This paper therefore focuses on a large – indeed the major – part of
neo-Latin drama in seventeenth-century France, namely college drama.
This was probably the theatrical genre of which most French citizens had
personal experience, either as spectators or actors, or both, and it would
therefore have been the most influential genre. On the one hand, the
vast majority of educated men passed through college, even if they had
been educated privately in their earliest years, and consequently many
of them actively participated in such drama as performers. On the other,
college drama was usually performed in front of quite a large public of
citizenry, who thus experienced it as members of an audience. All in all,
most writers of French-language drama, including famous authors of its
own future ‘classics’, were probably introduced to drama through its Latin
medium.
Town colleges in seventeenth-century France: Jesuits between town

and crown
In this paper I am concerned with normative patterns across France,
rather than a few well-known cases, and for that very reason my interpre-
tation may differ in certain regards from some of the published literature.
114 Judi Loach
This is because most research into seventeenth-century French drama

and education alike has effectively been based, if not exclusively then at
least disproportionately, upon exceptional cases, most notably the Jesuits’
colleges in Paris (the Collège de Clermont, subsequently Louis-le-Grand)
and at La Flèche (the Collège Royal Henri-le-Grand).1 No doubt this is at
least partly due to the greater quantity of evidence surviving from them,
with perhaps three times as many relations (published programmes) survi-
ving from the Paris college as from any other in France;2 the presence of
nobles’ sons in these two colleges also assured greater press coverage of
all events there, including theatrical performances. Moreover, these two
seem to be the only Jesuit-run colleges in France publishing entire texts,3
1
Despite its title, Ernest Boysse’s Le Théâtre des Jésuites (Paris: Henri Vaton, 1880),
still the only purported overview of French Jesuit theatre, is based on a study of the Paris
college alone. Likewise the Jesuit William McCabe’s An Introduction to Jesuit Theater,
ed. by Louis Oldani, SJ (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1983) depends predomi-
nantly on his own research into the Collège Anglais at Saint-Omer, a case at least as
atypical (see n. 7 below). Both these works are now seriously outdated (McCabe’s is a
posthumous, slightly updated version of his 1929 PhD thesis).
2
About 120 relations survive from the Paris college, as opposed to around 40 from
the other most prolific colleges (such as Rouen, Caen, Lyon and Amiens). A fundamental
methodological problem exists, due to the lack of any comprehensive synthesis integrating
research into college theatre across France, such as that available for its Germanic coun-
terpart, Jean-Marie Valentin, Le Théâtre des Jésuites dans les pays de langue allemande
(1554-1680), 3 vols (Berne: Peter Lang, 1978). Furthermore, the two principal sources
available for tracking primary source material, from which to make this deduction, do not
entirely concur: The most comprehensive coverage of French colleges under the ancien
régime is the 4-vol repertoire by Marie-Madeleine Compère and Dominique Julia, Les
Collèges français: 16e-18e siècles, 4 vols (Paris: INRP and CNRS, 1984-); until Vol. IV
appears a third of France outside Paris is not covered. Most of the relations (programmes)
for theatrical productions in Jesuit-run colleges are listed within entries for the respective
colleges in Carlos Sommervogel SJ, Augustin and Aloys de Backer SJ, Bibliothèque de la
Compagnie de Jésus, 12 vols (Brussels - Paris - Louvain, 1890-1960). Further informa-
tion can be gleaned from the entries in Les établissements des Jésuites en France depuis
quatre siècles, ed. by Pierre Delattre, SJ, 5 vols (Enghien and Wetteren: Institut supérieur
de théologie, 1949-57).
3
The evidence suggests that the initiative may have come from printer-booksellers,
rather than from the Jesuits: the complete text of Denis Petau’s Carthaginienses, first
performed at La Flèche while he was teaching there, was published there (La Flèche: J.
Rezé, 1614); after he moved to the Jesuits’ Paris college Sebastien Cramoisy published
this tragedy together with two more, all of which had been performed at La Flèche (in
1612-15), in the 2nd part of Petau’s Opera poetica (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1620). In
the same year Cramoisy published a collection of five tragedies by Nicolas Caussin, that
he had likewise written while at La Flèche (in 1615-18), as Tragoediae sacrae (Paris: S.
Cramoisy / S. Chappelet, 1620), two of them also being published separately in the same
year. The following year La Flèche published a collection of Pierre Musson’s tragedies
that had been performed there (in 1608-12): Tragoediae datae in theatrum collegii
Henrici Magni (La Flèche: Georges Griveau, 1621). A decade later, Cramoisy published
Performing in Latin in Jesuit-run colleges 115
as opposed to the synopses that were provided in the relations (effec-

tively programmes), issued by most colleges for virtually every perfor-
mance.4 This in turn is due to the fact that in Jesuit-run colleges such plays
were usually written by the teacher of the Rhetoric class, whose pupils
performed them,5 and most colleges relied upon regents (young trainee
Jesuits) to teach rhetoric. These regents’ own fluency and self-confidence
in expressing themselves in Latin was further developed by teaching the
language, and to such an extent that the Society of Jesus considered the
regency as an essential part within the training of all its members, most
of whom would not become teachers thereafter but instead preachers,
Louis Cellot’s Opera poetica (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1630) including three of his
tragedies, plus a tragi-comedy, all of which had been performed at La Flèche (1618-26).
After this complete texts were hardly ever published in France, although they continued
to appear in Flanders and Germanic lands; two of Petau’s tragedies and three of Cellot’s
were included in the Selectae PP. Soc. Jesu tragoediae published in Flanders (Antwerp:
Cnobbaert, 1634).
One of the two exceptions supports the hypothesis of printer initiative. Between 1693
and 1697 Jacques Guerrier, the printer ‘vis à vis le grand collège’ in Lyon, published
separately the relations for two ballets and full texts of four tragedies, all by the Lyonese
Jesuit Dominique de Colonia; in 1697 he issued these together as a single volume, printing
a new titlepage so as to issue it as Tragédies et oeuvres mêlées. The other exception is
Charles de la Rue, one of the greatest Jesuit orators and renowned for preaching at court,
who included full texts (hitherto unpublished) for two of his tragedies recently performed
at the Paris college in his Carminum libri quatuor (Paris: Simon Benard, 1680); the first
of these four volumes comprised his Lysimachus, presented in 1677, and his especially
successful Cyrus, already presented there in 1673 and 1679, and subsequently in 1691 and
1705.
In the early eighteenth century, several tragedies by Gabriel-François Le Jay, professor
of rhetoric at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, were published as full texts, after performance
there, and some were subsequently included in his Bibliotheca rhetorum praecepta et
exempla complectens: quae tam ad oratoriam facultatem quam ad poeticam pertinent
discipulis pariter ac magistris perutilis, 2 vols (Paris: Dupuis, 1725); Sommervogel,
Bibliothèque, IV, cols. 765-83. Subsequently six of the tragedies written for the college
by another renowned rhetorician there, Charles Porée, were published in his Tragoediae,
3 vols (Paris: Marc Bordelet, 1745), and a further five of his plays in his Fabulae drama
ticae (Paris: Marc Bordelet, 1749).
4
Throughout France publication of complete texts was rare, but relations were issued
for virtually all performances. See François de Dainville, SJ, ‘Le Théâtre des jésuites
en France: bibliographie’, in François de Dainville, SJ, L’éducation des Jésuites (XVIe-
XVIIIe siècle), ed. by Marie-Madeleine Compère (Paris: Minuit, 1978) pp. 473-75 (p. 473);
Edna Purdie, ‘Jesuit drama’, in Oxford Companion to the Theatre, ed. by Phyllis Hartnoll
(London: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 508-15 (p. 508).
5
This is generally accepted (e.g. Purdie, ‘Jesuit drama’, p. 509) but also becomes
evident from checking the name of author provided in any relation against the identity of
the Rhetoric teacher that year, which can be found in the relevant Province’s annual return
to the General in Rome.
116 Judi Loach
writers or public orators.6 Only the largest colleges had specialist teachers
of rhetoric (in addition to the regents), and the Parisian college, aware
of the greater publicity that it attracted, tended to commission tragedies
from these specialist teachers, who as well-known orators produced texts
that were sometimes marketable in their entirety.
The unrepresentative nature of such a sample needs to be recognised,

particularly within the context of this paper, for although Jesuit-run
colleges undoubtedly led the way in Latin-language drama – both in
terms of pioneering the genre within college, and of subsequently provi-
ding the model followed by others (albeit in diluted form) – the Collège
de Clermont and the Collège Royal Henry-Le-Grand were exceptional
even by Jesuit standards. They were probably the only colleges in France
founded as Jesuit institutions, and thus wholly independent of the cities in
which they were located:7 the first was a college established by the private
benefaction of a bishop (of Clermont, hence its name), independent of
– in fact, in the face of opposition from – local authorities (parlement
and université);8 the second was equally independent of local authorities,
being the sole royal foundation under Jesuit direction.9 Consequently, both
6
François de Dainville, SJ, La Naissance de l’humanisme moderne (Paris:
Beauchesne, 1940), pp. 339-42.
7
Some other Jesuit-run colleges in France also enjoyed relative independence from
the towns in which they were situated, but none of these were Jesuit institutions in the
sense of being founded by the order. Most were founded by pious individuals, the first, the
college at Billon (Auvergne), opened in 1556, being founded by Guillaume du Prat, the
same Bishop of Clermont as the one who provided the Jesuits with the building in Paris
for their college there (hence ‘Collège de Clermont’) (Les établissements des Jésuites en
France, ed. by Delattre, I (1949), cols. 701-08; Compère and Julia, Les Collèges français,
I (1984), 133-38). The college at Tournon, founded by its eponymous cardinal in 1536,
only came under Jesuit direction from 1561 (Les établissements des Jésuites, ed. by
Delattre, IV (1956), cols. 1407-35 (1408)); Compère and Julia, Les Collèges français,
I, 696-712 (pp. 697-98)). Likewise, the college at Rodez was run by seculars until the
Cardinal d’Armagnac engineered its handover to the Jesuits, in 1562. The case of the
Collège Anglais, established at St Omer in 1593, was exceptional in that it was explicitly
founded – as its name implies – for English Catholics, thus for pupils not merely drawn
from outside town but from overseas (Les établissements des Jésuites en France, ed. by
Delattre, IV (1956), cols. 886-913 (cols. 886-91)).
8
On the Paris college, see Emile Marie Joseph Gustave Dupont-Ferrier, Du Collège
de Clermont au Lycée Louis-le-Grand, 3 vols (Paris: E. du Boccard, 1921-25). See also
Les établissements des Jésuites en France, ed. by Delattre, III (1955), cols. 1101-1203;
Compère and Julia, Les Collèges français, III (2002).
9
On the college at La Flèche, while under the Jesuits, see Camille de Rochemonteix,
Un Collège des jésuites aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: le Collège Henri IV de la Flèche, 4
vols (Le Mans: Leguicheux, 1889). See also Les établissements des Jésuites en France,
these institutions drew students from outside their immediate locality,

and therefore had substantial pensionnats (boarding sections), despite the
order’s founder (Ignatius Loyola) having strongly advised against taking
on such a responsibility, deeming it a diversion from the order’s missio-
nary vocation and therefore an unnecessary waste of effort;10 the expense
of boarding restricted its usage to a wealthy elite, thus reducing the colle-
ge’s overall social mix, whereas most Jesuit-run colleges were exceptio-
nally meritocratic.11 Furthermore, La Flèche, founded by the monarch,
had a uniquely explicit aim of educating the sons of nobles.12 Besides,
both these colleges were established specifically as colleges to be directed
by Jesuits in perpetuity, whereas even in those town colleges where the
Society of Jesus (or indeed any other religious order) was appointed to
administer the college from its foundation, their continuation in that role
was subject to annual review by the city fathers; most colleges – indeed
all the others in France – therefore had to be far more attentive to the
wishes of their local communities.
In fact, the commonly employed term ‘Jesuit college’ is misleading,
insofar as these were neither seminaries nor Jesuit foundations, or even
colleges necessarily under the order’s long-term control. Indeed, the
Society of Jesus initially acquired any responsibility for secular educa-
tion, first in Italy, more by accident than by design; this had never been
an aim of its founder.13 Sometimes its fulfilment of such unanticipated
responsibilities could bring it into conflict with its original statutes: a case
ed. by Delattre, II (1953), cols. 904-19; Compère and Julia, Les Collèges français, II
(1988), 380-91.
10
Hence the Jesuits tended not to set up new pensionnats and attempt to evade respon-
sibility for running any existing ones, despite city fathers wanting to retain these insti-
tutions, as they enabled students from out of town to come to the college, their living
expenses then benefiting the urban economy. After the pensionnat at the Collège de la
Trinité in Lyon burned down, in 1644, the Jesuits there managed to avoid reconstruction
until into the following century.
11
John O’Malley, SJ, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1993), p. 211. The Ratio Studiorum specifically concludes its ‘Regulae Communes Profes-
soribus Classium Inferiorum’ (Rule 50): ‘Contemnat neminem, pauperum studiis aeque
ac divitum bene prospiciat … .’
12
Eric Nelson, The Jesuits and the monarchy: Catholic reform and political authority
in France (1590-1615) (Aldershot: Ashgate and IHSI, 2005), p. 111.
13
John O’Malley, SJ, ‘How the first Jesuits became involved in education’, in The
Jesuit Ratio Studiorum, 400th anniversary perspectives, ed. by Vincent Duminuco, SJ
(New York: Fordham, 2000), pp. 56-74 (pp. 60-73). O’Malley goes as far as to say ‘The
Jesuits, I think we have to admit, got into education almost by the back door’ (p. 64), but
proceeds to qualify this: ‘I exaggerate when I say that the Jesuits got into formal schooling
almost by a series of historical accidents, but there is at least a grain of truth in it’ (p. 73).
118 Judi Loach
of suffering from one’s own success. The situation in France was that in
the wake of the Renaissance, town councils of any ambition either took
over or refounded (or both) existing schools, or set up new ones of their
own, so as to provide, free of charge, a modern, secular and humanistic
education, taught through the medium of Latin,14 for sons of bourgeois (in
the original, early modern, sense, of the legal status of freemen or citizens
in a given town, or bourg: those who had satisfied its specified period
of residence and fulfilled its requirements of good standing, so as to be
considered fit for acceptance into its citizenry).15 By the mid-sixteenth
century, however, it had become evident that financing such institutions
exceeded council budgets, and therefore there was a widespread move
towards inviting certain religious orders capable of providing such modern
education to take over the teaching duties, celibate clergy being cheaper
than married men with families to support.16 By the end of the century the
Society of Jesus had become the order preferred for this purpose, as its
innovative educational system, codified in the Ratio Studiorum developed
through the second half of that century,17 had proved to be particularly
effective. Less well known, but, I suspect, equally important in the selec-
tion of this religious order, was the fact that the Society’s Constitutions
forbade it to charge students for any teaching it delivered.18 Payment was
only allowed to cover teachers’ living expenses, not to pay any fee for the
education delivered, and effectively accepting even this only from any
town authority, not from individual students or their parents.
14
George Huppert, Public schools in Renaissance France (Urbana and Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 1984), pp. 9ff.
15
See ‘bourgeois’ in the Oxford English Dictionary.
16
Huppert, Public schools in Renaissance France, pp. 102-15; O’Malley, The First
Jesuits, p. 219; Aldo Scaglione, The Liberal arts and the Jesuit college system (Amsterdam
and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1986), p. 114.
17
The authoritative edition of the successive texts of the Ratio Studiorum, concluding
with the final, authorised text of 1599, is Monumenta Paedogogica Societatis Jesu, V:
Ratio Studiorum 1586, 1591-2, 1599, ed. by László Lucács, SJ (Rome: Monumenta
Historica Societatis Jesu, 1986). The best recent edition, in terms of accompanying essays
and notes, is the bilingual edition, ‘Ratio Studiorum’: Plan raisonné et institution des
études dans la Compagnie de Jésus, ed. by Adrien Demoustier, SJ, Dominique Julia and
Marie-Madeleine Compère, trans. by Léone Albreius and Dolorès Pralon-Julia (Paris:
Belin, 1997). On the Ratio Studiorum, see The Jesuit ‘Ratio Studiorum’, 400th anniver-
sary perspectives, ed. by Vincent Duminuco, SJ, notably John Padberg, SJ, ‘Develop-
ment of the Ratio Studiorum’, pp 80-100; see also Allan Farrell, SJ, The Jesuit ‘Ratio
Studiorum’ of 1599 (Washington DC: Conference of Major Superiors of the Jesuits, 1970).
18
Scaglione, The Liberal arts and the Jesuit college system, p. 68. See also O’Malley,
The First Jesuits, p. 206.
The so-called ‘Jesuit colleges’ across France were therefore usually

town colleges: founded or re-founded by town councils, which initially
endowed these institutions, thus owning their buildings, and then provided
most of the ongoing capital and revenue budgets. Consequently these
councils retained ultimate control over crucial educational issues, such
as class size and even certain aspects of course content. The education
such colleges provided, given their civic, humanist basis combined with
the Jesuits’ Ratio Studiorum, was thus primarily secular in character, the
fundamental five-year course (the first cycle of three) covering lettres: Latin
Grammar and Poetry, Geography, History, Greek, and finally Rhetoric. In
other words, its aim was to produce citizens capable of clearly expressing
their ideas, orally through oratory or in writing through various prose
forms, so as to be capable of successfully taking on professional, city or
state posts, including those at court. Jesuit teachers therefore looked to
antique writers (primarily Cicero) for exemplars for orations, letters or
the like, but not for drama.19 Only certain colleges offered the higher level
course in philosophy (including logic, mathematics and sciences, ethics
and metaphysics), and far fewer still the highest level course, in theology;
moreover, although the latter was obligatory for Jesuits it was also open
to other students, and indeed was deemed sufficiently broad for training
priests and monks for other religious orders.
In 1594, in the wake of an attempted regicide in which Jesuits were
implicated (the would-be assassin being an ex-student), the Parlement
de Paris expelled the Society of Jesus from the Kingdom of France,
thus leaving many colleges across the land without teaching staff.20 In
1603, despite intense opposition from parlement and university alike in
Paris, Henri IV, in the Edict of Rouen, permitted the order’s return to his
kingdom, not least in order to demonstrate the validity of his abjuration
in 1593. Nevertheless, restrictive clauses in this royal edict initially only
19
The Ratio prescribes texts to serve as models for various genres of writing but not
for drama, which in Jesuit-run colleges was written anew by the rhetoric teachers (and
in some cases by pupils) of specific colleges for performance there; while the plots were
summarised in relations (programmes) issued at the time, full texts were rarely recorded.
20
Although this edict received royal assent, it was never accepted by the parlements
of the south-west, so that town colleges there remained under Jesuit direction (Nelson,
The Jesuits and the monarchy, pp. 52-53). Furthermore, half the Jesuit Provinces – those
of Flanders and Lyon – crossed national frontiers, so that the Society continued their
teaching activity within these Provinces, even if it had to withdraw temporarily from
certain towns within them, and could therefore reconstitute their staff there rapidly; for
instance, the fathers in the Province of Lyon withdrew to Besançon in Spanish Franche-
Comté and Avignon in the papal states.
120 Judi Loach
allowed the Jesuits to return for teaching purposes, so that the colleges
became their sole vehicles for mission and political propaganda alike.21
College drama was therefore exploited as one of the media available to
Jesuits for communicating their views to citizens.
Yet this edict brought the Society royal protection for the first time.
This would continue throughout the century, in the face of ongoing oppo-
sition from Gallicans and Jansenists (notably through the parlement and
university, and therefore most strongly within a Parisian sphere of influ-
ence), under Henri’s immediate successors, Louis XIII and Louis XIV;
it reached its apogee from 1683, when the latter became patron of the
Jesuits’ Parisian college, the Collège de Clermont being renamed Collège
Louis-le-Grand. The early to mid-seventeenth century thus witnessed
the order’s greatest period of expansion in France, thanks to invitations
to move into towns, albeit for strictly educational purposes; indeed, the
steady progression of councils asking the order to establish or take over
their town colleges outstripped the manpower available, such that many
invitations were declined and yet the length of the regency (the mandatory
teaching period for each trainee Jesuit) had to be extended in order to
fulfil the teaching obligations accepted,22 and thereby gain any foothold
in additional towns. It was this nationwide expansion of Jesuit teaching
activity that paralleled, and indeed underwrote, that of neo-Latin drama
in France.
Under the Henrician settlement the Jesuits had, according to the
Letters Patent, been invited back to France explicitly, and exclusively,
to impart ‘piété et lettres’ – together, and in that order. Henri’s inten-
tion was evidently to use the Jesuits, as a body now dependent upon him
for its return and as one outside the parlement and university (bodies
that had proved not altogether supportive of the monarchy), to realise
an agenda of his own, one of national rather than partisan interest: the
creation of a modern, educated officer class, as was needed by France
in an ever more competitive and international economy. The Society of
Jesus’ commitment to providing instruction free of charge together with
21
The edict also – again initially – restricted the Jesuits’ return to certain towns
(notably Lyon and Dijon but, significantly, not Paris) and, initially, forbade the return of
any Jesuits other than French nationals (Nelson, The Jesuits and the monarchy, pp. 77-78).
22
From working through a couple of decades of the Catalogi Breves and Catalogi
Triennales in the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome, this seems to have been the
case across the Province de Lyon throughout the mid-seventeenth century, but broader
and more systematic research is still needed here.
the meritocratic nature of their educational system – where progression to

subsequent years depended on successful performance rather than upon
age or parents’ ability to pay23 – made it the order best suited to attai-
ning this royal agenda; in addition, the order’s progressive dependence
upon the crown would ensure that it produced officers avowedly loyal to
the crown. Within this context ‘piété’ could become a means of inculca-
ting those virtues that would create officers committed to improving the
conditions of their fellow citizens, and in terms of serving the nation as a
whole rather than promoting just their own family or social class, as had
the nobility; equally this system countered the ongoing challenge, from
parlement and university, to the Jesuits’ right to teach. The mid-century
experience of the Frondes24 together with the Jesuits’ demonstrable
support of the crown, not least through college drama, would reinforce
subsequent monarchs (Louis XIII and Louis XIV) in their commitment
to protecting these rights for the order, indeed to the point of extending
them.
The creation and production of neo-Latin drama in seventeenth-century
France thus stems from the Jesuits’ negotiation of several, potentially
conflicting interests: between Jesuit obligations to the French monarch
and to their international (seemingly foreign) order; and between indi-
vidual Jesuit communities and their respective local bodies, such as city
council, parlement and university. This paper now turns to investigate
how the nature of neo-Latin drama created and produced within the Jesuit
colleges was shaped by this negotiation: first, through the relationship
between any college and its host town, and second, through such drama’s
function, within the order’s universal pedagogical system.
23
For a full description of the system put in place for ensuring that entry into any
cycle, progression between classes within it and graduation all depended upon academic
accomplishment, not payment or simple attendance, see Dainville, La Naissance de
l’humanisme moderne, pp. 279-90.
Dainville calculated that in the mid-seventeenth century 60-65% of the pupils at
Jesuit-run colleges in provincial France came from the ‘classes laborieuses’, and that
11-27% (depending on place and date) were labourer’s sons (‘Le collège et la cité’, in
Dainville, L’éducation des Jésuites (XVIe-XVIIIe siècle), pp. 150-64 (p. 159)). See also his
essay ‘Collèges et fréquentation scolaire au dix-septième siècle’ in the same volume (pp.
119-49), where the archive-derived statistics gives similar results (Table 1, p. 122).
24
There were two Frondes: the Fronde of bourgeois and parlement (1648-49) and the
Fronde of princes (1650-53).
122 Judi Loach
Town: civic obligations

In town colleges neo-Latin plays were never performed in isolation. They
invariably comprised but one part of a larger festival, for which ideally a
single theme was chosen, and to which all constituent events related. In
the vast majority of cases, this was the college’s annual festival, usually
held towards the end of the academic year, in conjunction with a prize-
giving ceremony.25 These celebrations usually filled most of a day, the
legally obligatory part being a ritual prescribed in the formal document
passing the college’s direction to the Society of Jesus, which set out an
annual rite for demonstrating the Jesuit community’s reconnaissance to
the city fathers: specifically the Jesuits’ gratitude for the provision of buil-
dings and a revenue budget to cover their maintenance costs in exchange
for teaching, together with their public acknowledgement of reciprocal
duties towards the city. This usually took place in summer, and thus just
shortly before the annual re-negotiation of the contract between the town
council and the Jesuit Rector, in which budget, class size, and number of
teachers would be fixed, and even details of syllabus debated. The annual
ritual was therefore no mere formality but instead a politically charged
occasion, or at least liable to be exploited and perceived as such. This in
turn affected the Jesuits’ choice and handling of subject matter in their
festivals, including the plays within them. Equally it conditioned their
audience’s interpretation of the plays, a fact to which we need to be alert
in considering these works: flattery could be literally vital for the survival
of the Jesuit presence in the given town.
The central rite – usually requiring the Rector’s proclamation of a pres-
cribed text, accompanied by the handing over of a specified symbolic
object, such as a lighted candle – was invariably enacted within the festal
mass, which presumably took place in the college chapel (usually the size
of a large parish church and so capable of accommodating not only all the
Jesuits alongside the city fathers and other prestigious guests but at least
the upper years of students and their parents as well). After the rite itself,
the Rector delivered a sermon in French in which he would thank the town
council for any exceptional contributions made to the college during the
25
Significantly, within the context of this paper – of redressing an imbalance due to
according disproportionate weight to evidence from the Paris and La Flèche colleges –
Delattre believes that this practice of mounting such festivities in conjunction with the
end of year prize-giving began in the provincial colleges and was only subsequently
adopted by the Paris college (Les établissements des Jésuites en France, ed. by Delattre,
III (1955), col. 1173).
preceding year, such as additional buildings, or endowments for library

acquisitions or for prizes, or would hint, often quite unambiguously, as to
projects in the year to come for which finance was desired. This sermon
was not only filled with the verbal imagery common to baroque oratory
but also exploited visual imagery, especially the decorations designed and
created for the day, some of which surrounded the congregation; it could
additionally draw upon any permanent decorative scheme present in the
college, or indeed upon any objects at hand, such as those used in the
rite of reconnaissance (notably the candle). The mass was thus a multi-
media performance, engaging multiple senses and drawing all present
into active participation, at least with their minds; by inaugurating the
day’s proceedings, it also endowed all that followed with a sacred quality,
thereby encouraging reflection by performers and spectators alike.
At the conclusion of the mass the Rector would invite prestigious
guests, including the local councillors, to a magnificent feast (for which
the council would later reimburse the Jesuit community), thus also
engaging the senses of smell and taste. During the luncheon, students
would provide entertainment in the form of affiches, the recitation of the
prize-winning poems written on a theme set that year, and composed
in as large a number of languages as possible so as to stretch the ablest
pupils, but which no doubt also helped to impress potential donors; these
were sometimes accompanied by complementary ‘posters’ (presumably
the origin of the term affiches), constituting part of the festal decorations,
for example hung on the walls around the diners.26
After this lunch the guests were led to another space within the
community’s precincts, where they rejoined the students, their parents
and as many other members of the town as could be accommodated, for a
dramatic performance; this could be in the college theatre, but was likely
to be in a larger space, so as to accommodate more spectators, and being
summer was often in the main courtyard.27 The performance invariably
26
This practice seems related to that of affixiones in the Jesuits’ colleges in some
other countries; on this in Flanders, see Karel Porteman and Mark van Vaeck, Emblem-
atic exhibitions (affixiones) at the Brussels Jesuit college (1630-85) (Turnhout: Brepols,
1996).
27
Dainville, ‘Le Théâtre des Jésuites’, p. 484. Most provincial colleges would not have
had an indoor theatre, but even those that did probably used the main courtyard instead,
so as to accommodate the largest possible number of spectators. The Paris college,
despite having a splendid theatre indoors, and a custom of creating expensive scenery and
machines for the end of year tragedy and ballet, presented its tragedy and ballet outdoors,
thereby accommodating five thousand to seven thousand spectators (Les établissements
des Jésuites en France, ed. by Delattre, III (1955), col. 1174).
124 Judi Loach
consisted of a tragedy in Latin,28 its acts interpolated with musical inter-

mèdes (or représentations en musique): usually ballets or light operas,
but sometimes pastorales or other comédies.29 The two performances,
although contrasting in mode, were both to convey the same moral lesson,
the tragedy through a history, its intermède through allegory. This under-
lying moral sense was sometimes spelt out unambiguously through récits
(‘L’Allegorie [...] sera exposé par x’), declaimed in tragedies but often
sung in intermèdes, and on occasion such that the two genres deliberately
informed each other.30
Relations – cheap printed pamphlets in quarto format, serving a similar

function to programmes today – summarised the plots scene by scene,
almost always in French.31 They often reiterated the underlying moral
lessons, thus ensuring that the audience literally took these home. They
also supplied cast lists of the student actors; publishing the names of noble
or foreign students within them enhanced the college’s prestige, as did the
inclusion of famous dance and music masters, of scenery designers and
engineers of machines.32 Occasionally all pupils were invited to join in
the final dance in the ballet.33 A sense of even wider audience involvement
would be instilled by integrating the space in which they were seated
into that in which the drama was performed, as was often the case, given
that large-scale performances were held in the central courtyard, without
proscenium separating audience from the stage.
28
The Ratio Studiorum (Regulae Rectoris, 13) prescribed that all tragedies and
comedies should be in Latin; its simultaneous proscription of women’s roles or costumes
was not observed completely, but the prescription of Latin was reiterated so perhaps taken
more seriously.
29
The interpolated ballet was especially developed in France; Purdie thinks this is
related to contemporary court practice there, but it seems unlikely that the latter would
have exerted much influence on provincial colleges (Purdie, ‘Jesuit drama’, pp. 509 and
511).
30
For example, see the relation for Jason, ou la Conqueste de la Toison d’Or, Ballet
meslé de recits pour servir d’intermèdes de la tragedie [performed at the Collège Louis le
Grand, Paris, on 3 August 1701] (Paris: Louis Sevestre, 1701), p. [1]. Likewise, one often
reads ‘x fera le récit du Sujet de la Tragédie’ and ‘y récitera le sujet de l’Intermède’ (e.g.
Ulysse Tragedie avec des Intermèdes [performed at the Collège de la Trinité, Lyon, on 30
May 1706] (Lyon: Louis Declaustre, 1706), p. 6).
31
The (low) survival rate of relations makes absolute statements risky, but the extant
evidence suggests that on those comparatively rare occasions when relations were
produced in Latin it was in addition to, rather than instead of, producing them in French.
32
The Jesuits employed the leading artists and composers of the day (Dainville, ‘Le
Théâtre des Jésuites en France’, p. 479), at least in their most prestigious colleges.
33
For example, Eustache, Tragedie [performed at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, Paris,
on 12 August 1693] (Paris: Veuve de Simon Benard, 1693).
Finally, if the audience was not already assembled within the main
courtyard, the Jesuit fathers led it there, where it would admire the
festal decorations: an artful assemblage of moral and didactic imagery,
primarily emblems and enigmas (paintings with enigmatic meanings),
and perhaps affiches. Some explanation of all but the enigmas might be
provided, orally or in the relation printed for the day. The audience was
now expected to participate alongside pupils in a competition, guessing
the intended meaning of the enigma devised for that year.34 The competi-
tors inevitably included many alumni of the college – among the pupils’
fathers and the prestigious guests – with long experience of this interac-
tive and brain-teasing entertainment.
Overall the day was arranged to be impressive and enjoyable for all
those attending, but at the same time both intellectually and morally
edifying. Following rhetoric’s triad of docere, delectare, movere, the
Jesuits believed that to be effective, education had to be enjoyable.
Perhaps due to this, the society that they educated, conversely, expected
entertainment to be at least witty, if not too apparently didactic. With
this in mind, the annual festival exploited a variety of different genres
of imagery and performance, so as to sustain interest while communica-
ting as much material as possible within the day. Furthermore, the Jesuits
believed that in order to attain the greatest effect upon any individual in
the audience, the spectacle should touch the maximum number of the
senses. Moreover, the specific theories of physical sense perception and of
mental processing endorsed and advanced by the Jesuits, and thus passed
onto their pupils, were founded on an Aristotelian model (mediated for
the Jesuits by Aquinas), which supported a belief that the will could only
be touched, and thus moved, by mental images (ones produced in the
individual’s imagination);35 such images, however, were immaterial trans-
34
On the genre of the (Jesuit) enigma, see Jennifer Montagu, ‘The painted enigma
and French seventeenth-century art’, Journal of the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes, 31
(1968), 207-35. The enigma seems to have become the subject of detailed articles in the
press even more often than were any of the dramatic performances, seemingly printed so
as to repeat the competition for readers.
35
Hence Bernardino Stefonio, SJ, in the Preface to his tragedy Crispus (1597): ‘The
entire theatrical display, constructed to move the affections of the spectators, made every-
thing more impressive by means of the images, which make an impact on the soul through
the ears and eyes. What human heart is so shielded with armour that it cannot be trans-
ported by the orchestra, the staging, the dramatic action, the scenery, and the harmony of
the sounds?’, cited by Marcello Fagiolo, ‘The scene of glory: the triumph of the baroque
in the theatrical works of the Jesuits’, in The Jesuits and the arts, 1540-1773, ed. by John
O’Malley, SJ, and Gauvin Alexander Bailey (Philadelphia: St Joseph’s University Press,
2005), pp. 229-46 (p. 231). Hence also, for instance, the explicit statement that our five
126 Judi Loach
lations of corporeal images transmitted from the material world through

the physical sense organs (primarily eyes, secondarily ears, and so on).36
The virtual lack of antique sources for stage practice gave the Jesuits
freedom to innovate. They exploited the fashionable and the exotic, most
obviously ballet but also splendid costumes, ‘musique et symphonie’ and,
above all, ingenious scenery37 and machines effecting seemingly magic
changements,38 and often concluding with fireworks. These spectacular
elements generated more column inches in the press than did any expla-
nation of the subject matter. By including them the French Jesuits, who
were largely restricted, by law, to operating through their colleges, won
useful publicity. Nevertheless, all these entertainments were conceived
as a means to an end, rather than an end in themselves. Each of the
genres of performance utilised by the Jesuits – including tragedy and
bodily senses are the only instruments by which the Creator can reach any human soul
(Lorenzo Ortiz, SJ, Ver, oir, oler, tocar, gustar, Empresas que enseñan y persuaden su
buen uso en lo Politico y en lo Moral (Lyon: Anisson, Posuel and Rigaud, 1687), pp.
294-95); or that acquiring knowledge depends upon exercising all five senses, and thus
requires exploiting the maximum number of them at once (Claude-François Menestrier,
SJ, Novae et veteris eloquentiae placita (n.p. [Lyon], 1663), ‘Totius Artis Rhetoricae
Oeconomia’, XXIV and XXVI). Belief in the efficacity of Jesuit theatre is witnessed, for
instance, in a college Rector’s claim (Billom, 1577) that ‘on ne joue pas des spectacles
de ce genre sans émouvoir les âmes et sans un fruit spirituel plus qu’égal à celui d’un
sermon réussi’ (‘Le Théâtre des Jésuites en France’, Dainville, L’éducation des Jésuites,
pp. 476-87 (p. 476)).
36
Seventeenth-century French Jesuits, and other Thomists of their time, used an
updated version of Scholastic faculty psychology. In its model of sense perception and
mental processing, naturally occurring corporeal images, especes, enter the mind through
the physical sense organs where a single internal sense, the esprit or phantaisie, converts
them into artificial and immaterial images spirituelles or phantosmes, which alone are
intelligible to the soul and thus capable of acting on the will. On faculty psychology in
general from the Middle Ages to early seventeenth century, see Eckhard Kessler, ‘The
Intellective Soul’, in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. by Charles
Schmitt and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 484-
534; Anthony Levi, SJ, French Moralists – The Theory of the Passions, 1585-1649
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1964); Katharine Park, ‘The Imagination in Renaissance psychology’
(unpublished M.Phil. thesis, University of London, 1974). On seventeenth-century French
Jesuit usage, see Judi Loach, ‘The Teaching of emblematics and other symbolic imagery
by Jesuits in town colleges in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France’, in The Jesuits
and the Emblem Tradition, ed. by John Manning and Marc van Vaeck (Turnhout: Brepols,
1999), pp. 161-73 (pp. 169-70). See also the treatise written for Louis, Grand Dauphin,
eldest son of Louis XIV, by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, De la connoissance de Dieu et de
soi-même, esp. ch. 1, ‘De l’Ame’.
37
See François de Dainville, SJ, ‘Décoration théâtrale dans les collèges des jésuites au
XVIIe siècle’, in Dainville, L’éducation des jésuites, pp. 488-503.
38
The relations for performances at larger colleges provide ample evidence. See also
Dainville, ‘Le Théâtre des Jésuites en France’, pp. 477-78.
other dramatic genres – employed imagery, as they believed its innate

mnemonic power optimised retention of messages beyond the event, an
aim further aided by the printed relation. In addition the audience was
expected to participate actively, at least by using their intellects, as was
perhaps most evident in the enigmas culminating the day. Such was the
context in which neo-Latin drama took its place: each member of the
audience arrived expecting to participate actively, at least with his or her
mind, but equally anticipating that he or she would not leave without
gaining something useful to take away.
Ideally all the day’s activities and decorations articulated a single
theme, chosen by that Jesuit assigned overall responsibility for organi-
sing the day’s festivities. At the very least the intercalated tragedy and
musical intermèdes would both follow, or rather articulate, a single idea,
or dessein. In this the French Jesuits were implicitly invoking Aristotle
as their authority, following their secular compatriots whose theory of
the Unities – the rules governing the neo-Classical tragedies now being
written in the French language – derived from Aristotle’s Poetics.39 In
order that the other theatrical and decorative genres exploited by the
Jesuits – notably ballet, opera and firework displays, emblems, enigmas
and affiches – might gain comparable respect, some Jesuits went as far as
to develop comparable sets of rules governing these genres, derived from
the same antique source.40 In these cases ‘unity’ began with the overall
39
In his Poetics, Aristotle states that ‘Tragedy is an imitation of an action which
has serious implications, that is complete, and of a certain magnitude’ (Poetics, Chap.
VI). From this, Lodovico Castelvetro (Poetica d’Aristotele vulgarizzata et sposta (Basle:
Pietro de Sedabonis, 1576)) derived the three Unities to be observed in any neo-Classical
tragedy: unity of action (a single action, preferably without subplots); unity of place (the
stage represents the same single space throughout); unity of time (the action should take
place within a fictive 24 hours). Aristotle had thus only insisted upon Unity of action, and
the Jesuits only insisted upon observing this Unity.
40
This project is perhaps clearest in the works of the Savoyard Emanuele Tesauro
and his French follower Claude-François Menestrier. Tesauro’s Cannocchiale Aristo-
telico (first published in 1654, after he had left the Society of Jesus: Turin, Giovanni
Sinibaldo) sets out his project to derive rules from Aristotle’s Poetics to govern all the
genres of performance and decoration in a way equivalent to that already done for tragedy
(Chaps. XIV-XVI/Chaps. XIV-XVII in editions published from 1663 onwards), using the
impresa, or device, as a worked example of this (Chapter XV). Menestrier then set about
writing treatises on those genres, and published such treatises on firework displays (1659),
tourneys (1669), opera (1681), ballet (1682) and funeral decorations (1683), heraldry
(numerous volumes from 1659), emblems (1662 and 1684), devices (1682 and 1686), etc.,
and left further treatises, notably on festivals (‘pompes sçavantes’ and ‘Entrées royales’)
in manuscript (Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon, MS 1514, fols. 52rº-71vº, and MSS.
942-943, respectively). See Judi Loach, ‘L’influence de Tesauro sur le Père Menestrier’, in
128 Judi Loach
theme (dessein) chosen for any given set of performances and associated
decorations. In addition, as students of Aquinas, the Jesuits had revived a
scholastic exegetical method, applying equal rigour to literal and ‘spiri-
tual’ (more precisely, intellectual) readings, the latter exploiting in parallel
moral, allegorical and (sometimes) anagogical modes.41 In their theatrical
practice, the tragedy would take its plot from history, which the Jesuits (in
common with others at this time) treated as a source for moral lessons; the
series of intermèdes would then take a plot from mythology (or ‘poetics’),
employing the allegorical mode of interpretation, so as to spell out the
tragedy’s topical relevance. As one relation put it:
Ce Ballet est une explication figurée de toute la piece. Ce qu’il y a de plus
particulier dans chaque acte se retrouve dans chaque partie du Ballet, & s’il
y a quelque chose dans ce dernier qui semble s’écarter du sujet, ce n’est qu’en
faveur du temps present, où l’on voit la Religion triompher de l’Heresie avec
beaucoup plus d’éclat, qu’elle ne triomphe alors de l’Infidelité. Au reste de
ce n’a esté qu’avec la derniere reserve qu’on s’est donné cette liberté.42
Another example serves to clarify this approach: the pairing of the

Tragedy of Andronicus with the Ballet de l’Innocence.
L’Innocence persécutée injustement dans la personne d’Andronic, &
couronnée enfin glorieusement dans son Martyre, donne occasion à ce Bal-
let.43
Hence a single relation often covers ballet and tragedy together,44 although
the former is likely to be described and explained in detail while only
a short resumé of plot is offered for the latter; in addition, the relation’s
La France et l’Italie au temps de Mazarin, ed. by Jean Serroy (Grenoble: Presses universi-
taire de Grenoble, 1986), pp. 167-71; Judi Loach, ‘Why Menestrier wrote about emblems,
and what audience(s) he had in mind’, Emblematica, 12 (2002), 223-83 (pp. 235-39).
41
On this scholastic mode of reading, see Henri de Lubac, SJ, Exégèse médiévale: les
quatre sens de l’Ecriture, 4 vols (Paris, 1959-65). John Cassian had outlined a threefold
mode of ‘letter’ (literal), ‘tropicus’ (moral) and anagogic (John Cassian, Collationes, 8.3).
Gregory the Great then added a fourth mode, allegorical (Hom. Ezek., 9. n. 8).
42
Le Triomphe de la Religion Chrétienne Ballet pour servir d’intermèdes à la
Tragedie (n.p., n.d. [1686]). The tragedy bore the same title as the ballet.
43
Ballet de l’Innocence (n.p. [Paris]), n.d. [1667]).
44
Such a ‘dessein du Ballet et de la Tragedie’ was a commonplace; a typical example
is L’Empressement des Arts [performed at the Collège de la Trinité, Lyon, 16 June,
1680] (Lyon, Jacques Canier, 1680). Alternatively the relation often gave the ‘Sujet de la
Tragedie’ and ‘Dessein du Ballet’, as in that for the Ballet de la Poësie, performed with the
Tragedie d’Idomenée [Collège de la Trinité, Lyon, 6 June, 1700] (Lyon: Claude Martin,
1700), p. 5 and pp. 6-7 respectively.
introductory Epistre might hint at the common underlying theme. Beyond

these aids members of the audience were expected to discern the under-
lying lesson for themselves, active use of their intelligence being believed
both to help move the will and to further assist subsequent memory, thus
each rendering more efficacious the moral lesson being delivered. The
relation, however, offered additional assistance to that provided on stage,
and indeed might also ensure that the correct interpretation was imputed
later. Yet even here the audience might instead be left to work the intended
meaning out for themselves; as one relation put it, ‘Nous laissons aux
spectateurs, le plaisir tout entier d’en faire eux-mêmes l’application, ce qui
ne sera pas difficile, si l’on fait réflection’.45
Teachers in the college, often including the Jesuit appointed as overall

organiser for the event, wrote the tragedy and intermèdes specifically for
the occasion and its anticipated audience, notably the prize donors or any
especially prestigious guest. This selection of a dramatic theme as appro-
priate to the particular day’s celebrations – in other words, to that specific
urban community at that specific moment in time – is perhaps most
obvious whenever the city fathers commissioned dramatic performances
from these Jesuits, as the most erudite body within their own town: for
national celebrations ordained by the state, to entertain prestigious visitors,
to honour local state officials on their promotion or receipt of some other
honour, or in thanks for exceptional gifts. On almost every occasion –
whether annual prize-giving or special event – the topical relevance of
the theme was emphasised in the accompanying relation, and further
underlined by the choice of dedicatees. This topicality rendered the plays
devised for these occasions unsuitable for performance in another town,
and even less so in another year. This in turn explains why any publica-
tions related to these plays – relations or full texts – were rarely reprinted
after the event.
Gown: pedagogical imperatives

In the case of town colleges delegated to the Society of Jesus, these Latin-
language plays were composed by Jesuits not only because they were
capable of devising their plots and writing the scripts but also because
the production of these plays, performed by their own pupils whom
45
Le repos de l’Italie rétabli par Hercule. Ballet allegorique mélé de récits pour
servir d’intermede à la Tragedie de Coriolan (Chambéry: Jean Gorrin, 1697).
130 Judi Loach
they at once taught in the classroom and rehearsed on stage, constituted

an integral part of their curriculum. Through its Ratio Studiorum, the
Society of Jesus obliged all Jesuit-run colleges, worldwide, to teach
through the medium of Latin,46 imposing punishment for pupils using
their mother tongue on college premises, even in recreational periods.
Despite the progressive transfer in many domains from Latin to French
over the course of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits continued teaching
in Latin, producing hardly any textbooks – let alone drama – in the verna-
cular until well into the next century. Such commitment to Latin was
political: although pupils studied the classics of Antiquity, these were as
instruments for learning to write original work themselves in passably
stylish Latin. This in turn was a means to a higher end, enabling those who
completed the course to read neo-Latin works of their own day, namely
those produced by the Roman Catholic Church, which they would thus
be capable of reading independently throughout their adult life. In fact,
on crossing the threshold into a Jesuit-run college one entered a territory
where Latin was the vernacular, hence the prohibition of using French
and the emphasis on training students not merely to read but equally to
write and speak Latin, indeed to think in that language. Since Latin was
treated as a living language, with the emphasis on training boys to express
their own ideas through it, the classics of Antiquity were still studied but
as exemplars in style for current usage rather than as ends in themselves.
This strongly suggests why these schoolboys never performed any plays
surviving from Antiquity, but instead tragedies which, while invariably
drawing on Roman history for their themes, were newly written for them,
explicitly as neo-Latin works.
Given the power of the language spoken by any individual to define their
identity and confer a sense of affiliation with the community speaking
it, Jesuits thus imbued their pupils with a sense of identity not so much
national as universal, one defined by religious rather than state allegiance.
Yet, paradoxically, this simultaneously fitted their crown-imposed obliga-
tion to teach ‘piété et lettres’ together. The pedagogical aim was evidently
to transform the whole person, heart and mind together, thereby creating
an ‘honnête homme’: the epitome of seventeenth-century French culture,
46
This applied from the most junior classes: Ratio Studiorum, ‘Regulae Communes
Professoribus Classium Inferiorum’, 18. Moreover, the Rector was to ensure that Latin
was also spoken at home, as far as possible, and that in those regions where it was feasible
the exemption from this on feastdays and in holidays was to be waived: ‘Regulae Rectoris’,
8. One doubts that this could often be observed in France. On the practice, as opposed to
theory, see Dainville, Naissance de l’humanisme moderne, pp. 118-22.
but in this Catholic context primarily a virtuous and cultivated man, one
able to instil cultured, Christian values into his society.
The Jesuits thus conceived of college education as a practical prepa-
ration for adult life, and therefore viewed fluency in Latin equally prag-
matically. While the ultimate aim of the educational system developed
in accordance with the Ratio Studiorum was the acquisition of divine
wisdom, through the completion of all three cycles, culminating in that
of theology, the Jesuits primarily presented fluency in Latin to their
civic sponsors as a competence required for careers leading to posi-
tions of influence: the law or diplomacy, preaching or teaching. In all
of these, reading alone would not suffice; their public performance in
the medium of Latin demanded greater emphasis than is usually evident
from contemporary rhetoric textbooks on pronuntiatio: on controlling
volume and pitch of voice, phrasing and emphasis within speech, stance
and posture of body, gestures and facial expressions.47 Jesuit spirituality
(from Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises onwards) and pedagogy alike implied
that physical examples and practical exercises were more effective than
lectured precepts. Their educational system therefore continuously
provided both living exemplars (teachers) to imitate and opportunities for
practising such imitation oneself. In turn the Jesuit educational system
turned even timid boys into men able and willing to participate actively
and publicly in adult society.
Pupils therefore learned through a carefully programmed variety of
exercises, with written translations, essays and verse compositions under-
taken alone, but far more group-work, and of a particularly active – even
performative – kind. Classes were divided into competing groups, and
every day began with each group’s members recapitulating the previous
day’s lessons out loud to their leader, who in turn rehearsed them to the
class leader. Homework was corrected publicly, the teacher presenting one
boy’s work and asking his classmates to comment on it, or even getting
two competing teams to engage in a battle over how best to correct it.
Meanwhile the teacher’s own daily formal lecture delivered in Latin – the
praelectio – provided an exemplar, literally embodying how to study a
passage so as both to extract its underlying moral lesson and to cultivate a
personal literary style through imitating it.48
Dainville, Naissance de l’humanisme moderne, pp. 123-24.

47
He read the passage aloud, gave a general idea of its overall sense then went through
48
the meaning of each sentence; next he went through the passage analysing words for
their propriety and elegance, pointing out rhetorical figures and elucidating difficulties;
132 Judi Loach
Each Saturday morning saw classroom performances. From the very

first year in college, boys recited passages learned by heart to their class-
mates. Later on, a pupil (warned the week before) took the teacher’s
place, explaining the week’s lessons and quizzing his classmates on them;
after that, a few other pupils would take the teacher’s place in publicly
correcting homework (so that each pupil got to ‘play teacher’ each year).
In higher years pupils would even compose short theses and present
them in class. Experience in teaching had made Jesuits aware that pupils
remembered lessons better when their fellow pupils taught, and it is likely
that they therefore expected tragedies to convey their moral lessons more
effectively to these pupils when acted by fellow schoolboys.
Teachers would prepare selected pupils several months ahead to perform
on special occasions, usually a mixture of public exercises (or ‘actions
publiques’), tragedies together with their musical intermèdes, and, in the
higher courses, of philosophy and theology, disputations.49 Most classes
would take part in public exercises, in which a pupil declaimed his own
résumé of, for instance, works by authors studied during that year. Trage-
dies were invariably performed by pupils from the Rhetoric year (gene-
rally about sixteen years old), whose teacher usually wrote them, while
intermèdes were either allocated to Humanities students (the year below)
or to the best dancers, drawn from across the years. On lesser occasions
public exercises alone would be presented, but outsiders would still be
invited, usually in smaller number but including potential employers,
such as eminent lawyers and officials.50 The surviving evidence of college
performances – in written, and usually published, form – patently repre-
sents but a very small part of what actually happened.
Due in part to the order’s universally applicable regulations, all
Jesuit-run colleges observed a similar calendar of festivals each year,
which provided opportunities for pupils systematically to view exemplars
and practise actively themselves; from the above, it should be apparent
that dramatic performances, diverse in kind, therefore constituted an
then he illuminated the passage overall, for instance by reference to the author, history
or mythology; finally he offered an exact translation. See Dainville, Naissance de
l’humanisme moderne, pp. 98-118.
49
For the higher classes (the Philosophy and Theology cycles) these activities were
formally prescribed in the Ratio Studiorum: for weekly and monthly disputations,
‘Regulae Praefecti Studiorum’, 16, and ‘Regulae Communes Professoribus Superiorum
Facultatum’, 14 and 15; for the end of year presentations by the best final year students,
‘Regulae Praefecti Studiorum’, 7-15, and at end of course, 19-26.
50
Dupont-Ferrier, Du Collège de Clermont au Lycée Louis-le-Grand, I, 127.
integral part of the educational programme. In autumn, the beginning of

the academic year was marked by the ‘Ouverture des Classes’,51 a practice
which the Jesuits took from university custom.52 This event took place
indoors and so, unless the college possessed a sizeable theatre, would have
been open to a restricted number of people, in most cases probably only
the community of pupils and teachers. It was marked by a formal Latin
oration, setting out an inspirational theme for the year to come: praise
of Louis XIV as the most Christian monarch, as victorious conqueror,
or patron of the arts; opposition to new doctrines, triumph over heresy,
or praise of the local bishop.53 The oration was delivered by the Jesuit
who had composed it, normally that year’s teacher of Rhetoric, and was
evidently intended as an exemplar of stylish oratory.54 Yet it does not seem
to have usually been published, suggesting that the text was deemed less
important than the Jesuit father’s performance of it. The exception was
the Parisian college, and there almost exclusively from the moment when
it acquired royal patronage, which had led to a radical transformation of
this festival – from an event mounted for the college community alone
to one oriented rather towards the prestigious guests invited from the
court – and the delegation of the oration to a specialist teacher of rhetoric
rather than to a regent.55 Even when such an oration was published, it
most commonly appeared later, in collections of such orations, gathered
together for students each few years as exemplars, often without identi-
fying their original function.
It is likely that some sort of decorations were mounted for this event,
and that they were designed so that their symbolic imagery comple-
mented the verbal rhetoric, but again the evidence for this is fragmentary,
with only the Parisian festivals being published on a regular basis, and
51
L-V. Gofflot, Le Théâtre au collège du moyen âge à nos jours (Paris: Champion,
1907), p. 91. This was formally known as the Instauratio (solemnis) studiorum/ scholarum
or Renovatio studiorum.
52
A. Lynne Martin, The Jesuit mind: The mentality of an elite in early modern France
(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 60.
53
For a list of the themes at the Collège de Clermont/Louis-le-Grand, 1645-98, see
Judi Loach, ‘Jesuit Emblematics and the opening of the school year at the Collège Louis-
le-Grand’, Emblematica, 9 (1995), 133-76 (pp. 174-76).
54
The Ratio Studiorum required this oration to be delivered by a ‘distinguished
teacher’ (‘Regulae Rectoris’, 15), but in practice apart from Paris (and even there, not
invariably until after obtaining royal patronage) it seems usually to have been the regent
in charge of the Rhetoric class who did, and to the extent that this seems to have been
considered as part of his own training.
55
Loach, ‘Jesuit Emblematics and the opening of the school year’, pp. 142-46.
134 Judi Loach
even these only after the college gained royal patronage.56 A new set of
decorations was commissioned each year, so as to be appropriate to that
year’s oration, but probably always took the same format.57 All the extant
evidence points to large-scale emblems predominating in such decora-
tions, no doubt due to the mnemonic power of images and the didactic
function accorded to the emblem genre.
Some colleges, including the Parisian college, mounted a play at
Carnival,58 usually a comédie, presumably in the Counter-Reformation
spirit of supplanting the unseemly festivities commonly associated with
this season by providing an alternative, more edifying and more Chris-
tian, form of entertainment. Some colleges, again including the Parisian
college, also celebrated Whitsun, the occasion for first communion – a
new, Counter-Reformation rite. This festival was especially associated
with affiches – recitations in a variety of languages (appropriate for cele-
brating Pentecost) – and enigmas, to the extent that it was often referred
to as the ‘Fête des Affiches’.59 The neo-Latin tragedy presented towards
the end of each school year was thus but one of a series of theatrical
performances punctuating the year, building up from an oration delivered
by a master to the school community, through small-scale performances
regularly produced by pupils in class throughout the year, interpolated
by a few isolated performances in different theatrical genres, and then
culminating in a day of public presentation to the town community, which
flaunted the pupils’ accomplishments in all these genres shortly before
the annual renegotiation of contract between the Jesuit fathers and the
city fathers. The principal neo-Latin play of each year was that performed
56
This was in part due to the fact that following royal patronage (hence the change
of name to ‘Collège Louis-le-Grand’) in 1683, this event entered the court calendar (and
therefore had to be postponed until after the end of the hunting season, shortly before
Christmas and thus some time after term had actually begun!). Consequently it became the
subject of newspaper reports, while a commemorative publication recording the oration
was always published (in Latin); sometimes details of the decorative scheme were also
published, but separately, and in French. In later years the orations began to be gathered
together in collections, and this practice to some degree replaced that of the annual publi-
cation. See Dupont-Ferrier, Du Collège de Clermont au Lycée Louis-le-Grand, I, 281;
Loach, ‘Jesuit Emblematics and the opening of the school year’, pp. 133-76.
57
At the Paris college, a triumphal arch hung over the doorway through which one
entered the theatre; a large hanging behind the dais on which the orator stood; and a series
of separate hangings around the gallery which ran around three sides of the auditorium
(Loach, ‘Jesuit Emblematics and the opening of the school year’, pp. 147-48; see also the
contemporary accounts of such decorations listed at pp. 143-44, n. 39).
58
Dupont-Ferrier, Du Collège de Clermont au Lycée Louis-le-Grand, I, 286; Les
établissements des Jésuites en France, ed. by Delattre, III (1955), col. 1173.
59
Dupont-Ferrier, Du Collège de Clermont au Lycée Louis-le-Grand, I, 270.
on this important occasion, which also marked the culmination of the

Rhetoric cycle for its actors, most of whom would shortly leave college
to work as adult members of civic society. Equally it marked the comple-
tion of the five-year regency (itself viewed by the Society of Jesus as a
period of practical training integral to preparation for entering the order)
by the Jesuit who had written and produced it, since he likewise could
now expect to move on, from teaching to become a student again himself,
this time of theology. Just as the performance of neo-Latin drama was
conceived as an integral part of the pupils’ education, so its writing and
production was for the regent’s training, for whom this was an exercise
simultaneously in neo-Latin composition and in direction of young men,
thereby honing skills useful subsequently, in preaching and overseeing
Marian congregations.
Implications: reception and influence of neo-Latin drama in late-

seventeenth-century France
The seventeenth century is often referred to by the French as ‘le grand
siècle’, meaning that century in which their native culture produced its
‘classics’ in several genres, especially in literary ones. It was certainly the
century in which the French language was formalised (notably through
the Académie Française and associated dictionary projects), having been
refined to the degree where it could be deemed as acceptable as the langu-
ages of antiquity for literary purposes. Yet it was simultaneously – at
first sight paradoxically – the century in which arguably the most Latin-
language drama was written and performed in France.
Over forty years ago, Roger Zuber demonstrated how early seventeenth-
century French érudits deemed the classic literature of antiquity to
provide the best models for forming taste, and thus for developing French
as a literary medium, enriching it with stylistic refinements hitherto only
available in antique tongues. Moreover, it was believed that such good
taste was best acquired through rendering these classics of antique litera-
ture into French, not so much a practice of literal translation as of imita-
tion (or rather mimesis), so as to transmit their essential idea (or dessein).
This phenomenon of creating such ‘belles infidèles’ was apparent from the
mid 1620s, reached its apogee from around 1640, and declined towards
the mid 1650s, by this time having served its purpose of transforming the
vernacular into a polite tongue.60 Simultaneously, however, the Society of
60
Roger Zuber, Les ‘belles infidèles’ et la formation du goût classique (Paris: A.
Colin, 1968).
136 Judi Loach
Jesus fought a rearguard action to maintain Latin as the language for the
highest genres of literature in France, in particular tragedy. Accordingly,
during the early decades of the century the Jesuits together with their
preferred printer – a commercially aware one – published in Paris the
scripts of certain plays authored by rising talents from La Flèche, recently
arrived in the capital; hence the publication, presumably as lively models
for neo-Latin drama to be performed on Paris stages, of Nicolas Caus-
sin’s Tragoediae sacrae (1620), and the tragedies included within Denis
Petau’s Opera poetica (1620) and Louis Cellot’s Opera poetica (1630).61
Nevertheless, by the beginning of the next century French Jesuits
themselves would begin to use their vernacular language in place of
Latin – even for tragedy. In 1704 the Collège Louis-le-Grand presented
Gabriel-François Le Jay’s Joseph vendu par ses freres, the French trans-
lation of his Josephus venditus first performed on the same stage less than
a decade earlier.62 The prologue added for this new version reflects the
Jesuits’ realisation of the inevitable - the vernacular’s steady usurping of
Latin’s time-honoured supremacy - for it was cast in the form of a debate
between Apollo on the one hand and two génies on the other: the ‘Génie
de la langue françoise’ and the ‘Génie de la langue latine’.63 When Le
Jay subsequently published a collection of his own Neo-Latin tragedies it
would be in a very different context from the collections of Caussin, Petau
and Cellot: his would appear within his revealingly entitled Bibliotheca
rhetorum praecepta et exempla complectens: quae tam ad oratoriam
facultatem quam ad poeticam pertinent discipulis pariter ac magistris
perutilis,64 in other words as models for usage outside a theatrical context,
confined to the classroom as models of style for schoolboys’ neo-Latin
writing. And soon after that the Parisian Jesuits would begin publishing
their French-language plays.65
61
See n. 3.
62
Gabriel-François Le Jay, SJ, Josephus venditus (Paris: Antoine Lambin, 1698).
63
Gabriel-François Le Jay’s Joseph vendu par ses freres (Paris: Louis Sevestre, 1704).
For further details, see Alison Saunders, ‘Make the pupils do it themselves: Emblems,
Plays and Public Performances in French Jesuit Colleges in the Seventeenth Century’,
in The Jesuits and the Emblem Tradition, ed. by Manning and van Vaeck, pp. 187-206
(pp. 189-90). In fact it was performed again in Latin at the same college, in 1709, indi-
cating that the situation was not yet definitively resolved; see Gabriel-François Le Jay, SJ,
Josephus venditus (Paris: Louis Sevestre, 1709).
64
2 vols (Paris: Dupuis, 1725); Sommervogel, Bibliothèque, IV, cols. 765-83.
65
French-language plays by Pierre Brumoy, SJ – best remembered for bringing
antique Greek drama within reach of those ignorant of its language, through his Le
Théâtre des Grecs (Paris: Rollin, 1730; then editions into the early twentieth century)
France’s Golden Age of neo-Latin drama thus flowered through that

half-century between the Society of Jesus bullishly publishing a bevy of
neo-Latin tragedies by younger members newly arrived in Paris and an
established Jesuit professor there being obliged to translate his successful
Latin tragedy into the vernacular. From the mid-seventeenth century the
French language was widely regarded as the nation’s literary language
and the Society of Jesus had been forced to rethink how neo-Latin might
best be used, developed and transmitted, so as to retain its status as a
living language. A religious order committed to instructing ‘piété et
lettres’ alike through imitatio therefore provided an abundance of models
that were literally dramatic: presented on the stage rather than through
the printed word.
From the mid-seventeenth century onwards the role played by Latin
in French society had changed radically, and the extensive production of
Latin-language drama there during the latter half of that century needs to
be understood within this new context. By setting Latin-language drama
in its contemporary context, this paper endeavours to explain the apparent
paradox of its apogee coinciding with the language’s declining importance
in wider society. Such drama was not that written by ancient Romans,
respected authors writing in classical Latin, originally performed for audi-
ences of their own time and then subsequently by Renaissance humanists
intent upon reviving a mythic ideal, of a culture lost when Europe ‘fell
to Barbarians’; instead the context was now one of Counter-Reformation
triumphalism, celebrating Rome’s renewed role as imperial capital, this
time of the Catholic Church. Consequently, these plays, rarely recorded
in print for posterity, were newly written by French schoolmasters, figures
forgotten today and even unrecognised in their own time. They were
written for ‘modern’ audiences, the present and future citizens of the
French towns in which they were performed, and they addressed topical
– appeared in the fourth volume of his Recueil de divers ouvrages en prose et en vers
(Paris: Rollin, 1741), e.g.: Isac (tragedy performed in 1740), Jonathas et David (tragedy
performed in 1739) and Plutus (comedy, published separately in 1743). Jean-Antoine du
Cerceau, SJ, was the only Jesuit of his day deemed to write drama as stylishly in French
as in Latin, but none of his plays were published during his lifetime. In 1730 he was
accidentally killed by one of his students, and only in 1651 did an ‘Amsterdam’ printer
or bookseller (‘La Compagnie’) (probably Paris, Jacques Estienne) publish Le Théâtre du
père du Cerceau as a supplementary volume to his Poésies diverses (reprinted from 1715
onwards); this contained half a dozen comédies together with the libretto for an opera by
Campra (performed as early as 1700) and the scenario of a ballet (performed in 1701). For
further details see Sommervogel - De Backer, Bibliothèque, II, cols. 972-76.
138 Judi Loach
issues, even if their moralising narratives drew their themes from Roman
Antiquity. Above all, they were deliberately written not in antique Latin
but in neo-Latin, and, by employing this modern language for addressing
issues relevant to contemporary civic society, it was implicitly presented
as an alternative vernacular for everyday life.
In other words, the function of Latin language was no longer, as it
had been previously, to offer a literary exemplar for inspiring a rarefied
erudite elite. Instead, Latin was now being presented, albeit tacitly, as
the vernacular for civic life in a meritocratic society, where free educa-
tion financed by the city as a body politic offered its own sons, largely
drawn from the artisan and lower merchant classes, the opportunity to
rise into the professional and administrative class. The plays written for
performance by pupils in the town college were devised as part of their
academic curriculum, as the exercises required for schoolboys to practise,
bodily and publicly, an art or craft – rhetoric’s pronuntiatio – the means
by which an orator engaged his audience: gestures of hands, posture of
torso, tone and modulation of voice, eye contact, and so on. In other words,
this college theatre served to put on stage in front of the civic community
final rehearsals for its adolescents just about to enter adult society: as
officers of town or state, as lawyers, priests or teachers, as magistrates
or councillors. By employing neo-Latin as the language by which these
future citizens communicated moral lessons to their elders through alle-
gorical representations of topically relevant issues, neo-Latin was specifi-
cally implied to be the language of civic exchange for this modern society.
Moreover, having been educated entirely through the medium of Latin
for the five years of the Rhetoric cycle, neo-Latin had become not only
a language through which all educated citizens could communicate with
each other – both orally and in writing – but that through which such
individuals thought: the language of their commonly accepted system of
reasoning and of their shared treasury of quotations or illustrative narra-
tives.
Simultaneously such Latin was also the language through which
Catholic citizens acted out all ritual pertaining to their most deeply held
beliefs, and not only through participation in the Tridentine liturgies
of the Mass and other offices performed publicly within parish church
or confraternity chapel. Perhaps more significantly, the most intimate
forms of worship, those of private devotions enacted within the privacy
of home, even bedchamber, revolved around reciting Latin texts, most
notably the Paternoster and Ave Maria. And at any time, in any place, one
could finger a rosary, murmuring or silently intoning these same Latin

prayers in longer sequences. Yet all this personal devotional life was now
increasingly falling under the gaze, even control, of clergy, notably those
from the new post-Tridentine orders, who organised Marian sodalities
or other confraternities, bodies that progressively displaced traditional
confraternities in which laity had exercised greater control. And these
same, predominately new orders, primarily the Society of Jesus, but also
the Oratory, as well as established orders such as Dominicans, ran town
colleges. In other words, Latin was exploited as part of the Church’s
policy of regaining control over all aspects of each individual’s everyday
life, and thereby that of the body politic. In this context the universal
Church had a vested interest in maintaining its own language as that of
civic society, and so of trying to prevent it being displaced by the native
vernacular.
In late seventeenth-century France, neo-Latin drama, in presenting
material of didactic and moral import (‘piété et lettres’) to a specific,
local audience, was therefore intended to serve a Counter-Reformation
purpose which inevitably distanced it both from Latin-language drama
of any previous period and French-language drama of its own time. It is
therefore not surprising if it had little immediately obvious influence upon
commercial theatre, in the seventeenth century or beyond, even if most
of the best-known neo-Classical dramatists in France, such as Corneille
or Molière, had been introduced to drama as schoolboys, acting on Jesuit
college stages.66
E-mail: loachj@Cardiff.ac.uk
The influence of Jesuit drama on a few of these famous authors has been reconsid-
66
ered within this context. See for instance Marc Fumaroli, ‘Corneille disciple de la drama-
turgie jésuite: le Crispus et la Flavia du P. Bernardino Stefonio SJ’, in Héros et orateurs:
Rhétorique et dramaturgie cornéliennes (Geneva: Droz, 1996), pp. 138-70.
Jan Bloemendal
Similarities, Dissimilarities and Possible
Relations Between Early Modern Latin Drama
and Drama in the Vernacular
Introduction
At first sight we might have the impression that early modern Latin drama
and vernacular drama are separate entities.1 They use different langu-
ages, have different audiences, different structures, different intentions,
and different developments. They belong to different literary fields. So it
is not surprising that literary history often treats them separately, at least
in the Netherlands. For this paper, I will confine myself to drama in the
Netherlands, but for other countries one can argue mutatis mutandis —
even though perhaps multa mutanda sunt — the same.
At one point the situation in the Netherlands differed from that of
other countries. In the fifteenth century a new kind of literary organi-
sation arose. These Rederijkerskamers (‘rhetoricians’ chambers’) were
literary and social clubs that met regularly, in most cases once a week.
The rhetoricians considered themselves as the vernacular counterparts
of the humanists, and aimed at educating themselves and their audience.
In that sense, just like the teachers at the Latin schools, they introduced
(young) people into the world of learning, preparing them for their future
lives as leaders, lawyers, ministers, and priests. The rhetoricians orga-
nised literary competitions at which they staged dramas — which took
pride of place, especially the zinnespelen, among their literary forms —
or declaimed refreinen. Their chambers can be compared only to the puys
in the northern part of France.2 The rhetoricians’ movement exerted so
1
This paper is part of the NWO-funded Vidi project ‘Latin and Vernacular Cultures:
Theater and Public Opinion in the Netherlands c. 1510-1625’. I wish to thank my colleague
Gerard Huijing for correcting the English text.
2
On the social structure of these chambers, see Arjan van Dixhoorn, Lustige geesten:
Rederijkers en hun kamers in het publieke leven van de Noordelijke Nederlanden in de
vijftiende, zestiende en zeventiende eeuw (unpublished thesis, University of Amsterdam,
2004), on the northern Netherlands, and Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, Om beters wille:
Rederijkerskamers en de stedelijke cultuur in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden (1400-1650)
(unpublished thesis, University of Ghent, 2004), on the southern provinces. See also Elsa
Strietman, ‘Finding Needles in a Haystack: Elements of Change in the Transition from
Medieval to Renaissance Drama in the Low Countries’, in European Theatre 1470-1600:
Traditions and Transformations, ed. by Martin Gosman and Rina Walthaus (Groningen:
Egebert Forsten, 1996), pp. 99-112.
142 Jan Bloemendal
much influence on literary life that historians of Dutch literature tend to

speak of the period 1450–1550 (which has also be named the Waning of
the Middle Ages or the Dawn of the Golden Age) as ‘the Age of the Rede-
rijkers’. Their literature, together with French literature at the Burgundian
Court in Brussels, the Latin literature of the humanists, and the pious
prose of the Brethren of the Common Life, especially Thomas a Kempis’
De imitatione Christi (printed in 1471–2) determines the prestige of the
literature of the Low Countries by then. Their literature was bourgeois in
character and originated from the rich towns, which had developed into a
third power alongside the nobility and the clergy.3
The development of Latin drama and vernacular drama more or less
coincide. The development of Latin drama is well known.4 In the fifteenth
century, humanist drama deviated from the religious and the morality
plays of the late Middle Ages, under the influence of Latin drama — of
Seneca in Italy and of Terence and Plautus in Germany and the Nether-
lands. In Italy it had already started in the second decade of the fourteenth
century when Albertino Mussato, a member of the Paduan humanist circle,
imitated the tragedies of Seneca in his play Ecerinis, which is based on
local history. In Germany it was Reuchlin who imitated Roman comedy
in his Henno (1497) and introduced the iambic senarius or trimeter, and
the play in five acts with choruses between the acts.5 The last perhaps
originated in his reading of Seneca’s plays, or of Horace’s remarks in the
Ars poetica about the five-act play and the chorus’s playing a role between
the acts.6 Reuchlin’s renewal proved to be seminal, and the Dutch play-
wright Georgius Macropedius (1487–1558), for instance, adopted the new
form, openly stating that he was inspired by Reuchlin.
3
See, e.g., Hans van Dijk, ‘Structure as a Means to Audience Identification in the
Dutch Rederijker Drama’, in European Theatre, pp. 113-117, esp. p. 113.
4
See, e.g., Jozef IJsewijn, with Dirk Sacré, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies II:
Literary, Linguistic, Philological and Editorial Questions, Supplementa Humanistica
Lovaniensia 14 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1998), pp. 139-64, and, for the northern
Netherlands, Jan Bloemendal, Spiegel van het dagelijks leven? Latijnse school en toneel
in de noordelijke Nederlanden in de zestiende en de zeventiende eeuw (Hilversum:
Verloren, 2003).
5
Johannes Reuchlin, Henno: Komödie, ed. by Harry C. Schnur (Stuttgart: Reclam,
1970). Sebastian Brant wrote: ‘Quo duce [sc. Capnione, i.e. Reuchlin] Germanos comoedia
prima revisit / Et meruit soccis Rhenus inire novis.’
6
Ars poetica 189-190 and 193-195.
Early Modern Latin Drama and Drama in the Vernacular 143
Differences
The traditional view on the development of drama in the vernacular is
that it took a different course. Medieval drama originated in ecclesiastical
liturgy and comprised Easter, Christmas, miracle, biblical, and mystery
plays. Besides this there was non-religious drama: abele spelen, and
esbattementen or comical farces. In the sixteenth century, as has already
been mentioned, the rhetoricians wrote and staged their plays: farces,
morality plays, and biblical dramas. By then, overt competition entered
the literary field and the authors — presenting themselves as members of
their chamber — wrote and performed their plays at contests. By then,
too, the author came to the fore as an individual. The writing of classical
tragedy had its origin in the rhetoricians’ movement with its collectivist
sense — by, among many others, Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, Samuel
Coster, and Joost van den Vondel, to name but a few.7
The structure of the two types of drama differed. The mainstream
of Latin drama consisted of five-act plays based on classical Roman
dramatic forms like the tragedies of Seneca and the comedies of Terence
and Plautus. Also the Roman quantitative metrical system was adopted.
In plays in the vernacular verse lines with stress accent, not quantitative
metre, prevailed, and the structure was less rigid. Rhetoricians’ drama
consisted of (about 8) parts or metascenes, divided by pauses (pausa’s)
and it contained tableaux-vivants (toghen). The characters in the two types
of play differed too. In the rhetoricians’ spelen van sinnen, the sinnekens,
allegorical figures, played an important role, while in Latin drama, more
‘true-to-life’ characters appear on stage.
The aims of the two types of drama seemed to differ too. Latin school
drama — and in another way and for another, very limited, audience the
same can be said about academic drama — fitted into the humanist educa-
tional programme of moral and religious edification through linguistic
training. Moreover, it was part of the public relations of the Latin schools
and it aimed at developing the pupils’ fluency in Latin, speaking in public,
etc. Learning Latin, of course, did not hold for the contemporary rheto-
ricians’ plays and Renaissance classical dramas, although the authors
7
See for such a view, e.g., Reinder P. Meijer, Literature of the Low Countries: A
Short History of Dutch Literature in the Netherlands and Belgium (Assen: Van Gorcum,
1971), pp. 49-62. One has to make a clear distinction between the rhetoricians chambers
as a social movement and rhetoricians as authors of a type of literature, since it was the
rhetoricians who renewed the forms of, e.g., drama and invented ‘Renaissance’ drama,
also seen as a formal and stylistic category.
144 Jan Bloemendal
in the vernacular also aimed at the literacy, and the moral and religious
improvement of the audience. Related to the aims and to the content was
the fact that the plays contained several types of discourse, ranging from
monologue to prayer, from dialogue to sermon, from messenger speech
to song and chorus, which made the dramas — in particular the verna-
cular ones — a multimedia show. It is notable that classical dramas by
Plautus, Terence, and Seneca, and Latin translations of Greek plays
were also staged. These plays were hardly ever performed in vernacular
translations, although the Antwerp rhetorician Cornelis van Ghistele
(1510/11–73) translated the comedies of Terence into Dutch (1555) as well
as Sophocles’ Antigone (1556).
With regard to the religious setting of the plays, since 1517 ‘Europe’s
house’ was ‘divided’. Many religious and/or ideological sides, including
Lutheranism, Roman Catholicism, and Erasmian humanism, sprang up
from St Augustine’s theology, stressing either divine grace or human
responsibility. In other words, the Reformation could be summarised as
the ‘ultimate triumph of Augustine’s doctrine of grace over Augustine’s
doctrine of the Church’.8 This development is reflected in drama. For
the humanist Latin part, the reflection is diffuse. On the one hand there
are the truly Roman Catholic authors such as Georgius Macropedius
(1487–1558) in ’s-Hertogenbosch and Utrecht, Cornelius Laurimanus (c.
1535–73) in Utrecht, Cornelius Crocus (c. 1500–50) in Amsterdam, and
Cornelius Schonaeus (1540–1611) in Haarlem, and in the later sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries the Jesuit authors and dramatists of other reli-
gious orders. On the other hand, there are the reformist authors such as
Guilielmus Gnapheus (1493–1568). Gnapheus left The Hague and went
into exile to Germany because of his Lutheranism. Rhetoricians’ drama,
however, was more focused on reformist ideas.9 So one could conclude
that Latin drama aimed at either preserving the Roman Catholic doctrine
of the Church or the reformist doctrine of grace, while drama in the
vernacular mainly propagated the Protestant doctrine of grace.
All this is closely connected to the authors and the audience of both
types of drama. Latin drama was written by members of the international
Respublica literaria, and read by and performed by and for boys, pupils
8
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700 (London:
Allen Lane, 2003), pp. 107-114; Alistair McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the
European Reformation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), pp. 175–182.
9
See Gary K. Waite, Reformers on Stage: Popular Drama and Religious Propaganda
in the Low Countries (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000).
of the Latin schools, their parents, and the intellectual and social elites of
the city. It was mainly a male affair. Vernacular drama, on the other hand,
was written by burghers and performed by them and for their fellow-
burghers, comprehensible for men and women.10
Another difference is the geographical circulation. The rhetoricians’
plays remained a local or regional phenomenon, while the Latin dramas
were played all over Europe in the Republic of Letters already mentioned.
Connected with this is the issue of the printing of plays. While Latin plays
were quite often printed, and sometimes even in several places in the civi-
lised, i.e. Latinised world, plays in the vernacular in many cases remained
in manuscript. Hooft, however, stated that his dramas were better propa-
gated and more intensely received through performances than through
books, which were printed in only 500 to 1000 copies. It is, therefore, a
question to what extent the printing process of dramas contributed to their
circulation. Being printed does not mean being sold, being bought does
not mean being read, and being read does not mean being understood in
some way or other.
So much for the differences. The image arises of deeply separated
circuits of Latin and vernacular literary activities, especially in the case
of drama. Of course, there were translations of Latin plays into the verna-
cular, and on an international scale. Latin plays written in the Nether-
lands were translated into Dutch, German, French, English, Danish, and
Swedish, to mention some, and in other — fewer — instances Dutch plays
were translated or imitated in Latin, but these are no more than scattered
border crossings.
Connections and similarities

It will be clear that all this has to be qualified. In the first place, actual
connections between the authors of literary works in Latin and those
who wrote in the vernacular were closer than was previously thought.11
The rectors, conrectors, and the teachers of the Latin schools who wrote
Latin dramas were also engaged in local circuits, while on the other
hand authors in the vernacular had access to the international republic of
learning through academics, priests, and schoolmasters, some of whom
were members of a rhetoricians’ chamber or had relatives who were active
in the ‘other’ field. Since 1530, contacts between the world of rhetoricians
10
See van Dixhoorn, Lustige geesten, pp. 35-38.
11
Van Dixhoorn, Lustige geesten, esp. ch. 10 ‘Geletterden en publicisten’, pp. 393-427.
146 Jan Bloemendal
and the world of learning were intense and structural. Both networks
discussed, criticised and propagated reformatist ideas. In Haarlem Corne-
lius Schonaeus led his pupils in the procession of the local rhetoricians’
feast in 1606 and he wrote a ‘lottery-play’ that, when published, contained
parts in Latin and Dutch — irrespective of the question of whether the
Dutch parts of the play were of his own hand or were written by a rhetori-
cian, they were in fact printed as a whole — for the charity lottery of that
year.12 The networks of the humanists and of the political-social elite were
also closely connected. Thus the ‘social’, ‘intellectual’, and ‘symbolic
capital’ — to use Bourdieu’s terms — increased by interrelations.13 Some-
times these relations were affirmed by intermarriage, as can be seen for
instance in Haarlem in the circles around Dirk Volkertszoon Coornhert,
Jan van Zuren, Quirinus Talesius, Hadrianus Junius and Cornelius Scho-
naeus.14 By these connections the rhetoricians soon became familiar with
recent developments in the humanistic rhetoric of international literature
and used this knowledge to renew vernacular literature.
The other burghers too got acquainted with humanist literary activi-
ties, since the staging of plays, be it in Latin or in the vernacular, in most
cases was a public affair. The pupils of the Latin schools performed inside
or in front of the town halls or at the marketplace, so that everybody could
attend the plays. Those who had no knowledge of Latin could amuse
themselves with the scenery, the acting, and the costumes, and with the
young players, some of whom they probably knew. The parents will have
been proud of their little boys, and as Jacobus Pontanus put it:
Videmus praeterea parentes admodum desiderare, ut filii doceantur bene
gestum agere, moderari manus, vultum, corpus totum, ac vocem etiam in-
flectere atque variare, et in his omnibus posthabito pudore subrustico liberi
esse, nihil metuere.
(Moreover we see that parents demand that their sons are taught to gesture
well, to control the movements of their hands, their face, their whole body
and also to modulate and change their voices and in all these things, without
having any peasant-like shame, to be free and to fear nothing.)15
12
Poems in Dutch written by Daniel Heinsius were incorporated in rhetoricians’
anthologies like Den Bloem-Hof van de Nederlantsche Ieught (1608) and Den Neder-
duytschen Helicon (1610); the former rector of the Latin school of Zierikzee, Reinier
Telle, wrote a laudatory poem for Bredero’s Lucelle (1618), etc., etc.
13
Pierre F. Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature,
ed. by Randal Johnson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993).
14
Van Dixhoorn, Lustige geesten, p. 403.
15
Jacobus Pontanus SJ, Progymnasmata latinitatis, 2 vols (Ingolstadt: Sartorius,
Furthermore, attending the performance of a Latin drama must have been

tiring for many members of the audience because of the language. The
Jesuits often partially solved this problem by opening the play with a
Latin prologue and a prologue in the vernacular. The Latin prologues
were directed to the serenissimi Principes, the nobiles patricii, and the
ceteri cives who knew Latin, while the German prologues were spoken
by, for instance, a rusticus who addressed the non-Latinised audience,
the common man.16 From 1597 onwards the public were given periochae,
programmes or leaflets, that often contained a survey of every scene
and gave the content of the play in Latin and the vernacular.17 These
programmes and the stage directions made clear to the public, including
the non-Latinised part of it, who were virtuous and who were evil.18 This
may all serve to prove that humanists actually participated in local acti-
vities and networks.
Another argument for this is the fact that humanist authors sometimes
used subjects or themes from writings in the vernacular. Macropedius,
for instance, for his farcical play Andrisca used themes from the Cluyte
van Playerwater and Moorkensvel, in which a farmer’s wife instructs her
husband to get some special water so that she can have her way with a
priest, and an adulterous wife is punished by her husband, who sews her
up in a horsehide. Johannes Placentius (Johan Struyven) for his Clericus
eques must have used vernacular material for the clergyman on horseback
who deceives a farmer’s wife and her husband.19 He says he has come
1589), I, 457. Quoted by Barbara Bauer, ‘Deutsch und Latein in den Schulen der Jesuiten’,
in Latein und Nationalsprachen in der Renaissance: Vorträge des 37. Wolfenbütteler
Symposions in der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel vom 25. bis 28. September
1995, Wolfenbütteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung, 17, ed. by Bodo Guth-
müller (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 1998), pp. 227-257, quotation on p. 233.
16
Bauer, ‘Deutsch und Latein’, pp. 228-230.
17
Of the 586 periochae Elida Szarota edited, 113 (a quarter) are only in German;
they were made in the early phase of Jesuit Latin drama. Only 27 periochae are only in
Latin. The great majority (425, 72.5 %) are bilingual. In that case the German part is more
elaborate than the Latin text, see Elida Maria Szarota, Das Jesuitendrama im deutschen
Sprachgebiet: eine Periochen-Edition. Texte und Kommentare, 4 vols (Munich: Fink,
1979–87).
18
Another explanation has been given by Wolfgang Braungart, ‘Ritual und Literatur:
literaturtheoretische Überlegungen im Blick auf Stefan George’, in Sprache und Literatur
in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 23 (Heft 69) (1992), 2-31. He contends that incompre-
hensibility formed the attractiveness of Latin plays as part of the ‘aesthetics of the ritual’.
19
For the view that Latin material may have been used, see Elisabeth Govaerts,
‘Placentius’ “Clericus Eques” en het verhaal van Barta: een bijdrage tot de geschiedenis
van het komische toneel in de Neolatijnse literatuur der Nederlanden’ (unpublished
masters thesis, KU Leuven, 1981).
148 Jan Bloemendal
from Paris, while she thinks he has come from paradise and is asking
about her first husband who was by then already dead. The clericus is
given clothes and money for the dead man and a horse to bring them to
him.
On the other hand we can see that Latin dramas had an impact on plays
in the vernacular. For instance, Macropedius in his play Jesus scholas-
ticus (1556) treated the story of Jesus’ visit to the Temple at the age of
twelve, told in Luke 2. 41–51. The subject was not treated many times,
but there are two rhetoricians’ plays, by Robert Lawet from Roeselare,
Ghestelick spel van zinnen van Jhesus ten twaelf jaren oudt (c. 1571) and
by Louris Janszoon from Haarlem, Hoe Christus sit onderdie Leeraers:
Luce int 2. Cap. (1580).20 There are remarkable similarities between these
plays, especially the play by Louris Janszoon and Macropedius’s fabula.
In both works the scribes and Jesus talk about the coming of the Messiah,
an element that cannot be found in Luke. In both plays the same passages
from the Bible occur, in both plays Jesus teaches the Lord’s prayer to some
others. Macropedius’s play Rebelles (1535) was imitated by Schonaeus in
his Dyscoli (1603), which in its turn was imitated by the ‘duytse meester’
(teacher in Dutch) at the Dordrecht Latin School, Pieter Godewyck, in his
Wittebroods kinderen of bedorve jongelingen (1641). It seems strange that
pupils of the Latin school should perform a play in Dutch, since learning
Latin was the central aim of this educational system, but more perfor-
mances in Dutch are known.21
Famous examples of the reception of Latin plays in the vernacular are
Joost van den Vondel’s translations of tragedies by George Buchanan
and Hugo Grotius. Vondel translated Buchanan’s Jephthes, sive Votum
(1554) as Jeptha of Offerbelofte (1659) and Grotius’s Adamus exul (1601)
as Adam in ballingschap (1664). Dutch adaptations of Daniel Heinsius’s
Auriacus, sive Libertas saucia (1601) were made by Jacob Duym in Het
moordadich Stvck van Balthasar Gerards (1606) and by Gijsbrecht van
Hogendorp in Truer-spel van de moordt, begaen aen Wilhelm, by der
gratie Gods, prince van Oraengien (1617).
20
See Henk Giebels and Frans Slits, Georgius Macropedius: leven en werk van een
Brabantse humanist 1487–1558 (Tilburg: Stichting Zuidelijk Historisch Contact, 2005),
pp. 284-5 and H.A. Enno van Gelder, Erasmus, schilders en rederijkers: de religieuze
crisis der 16e eeuw weerspiegeld in toneel- en schilderkunst (Groningen: Noordhoff,
1959), pp. 103–4 and 107–8.
21
See Anneke Fleurkens, ‘Meer dan vrije expressie: schooltoneel tijdens de renais-
sance’, in Literatuur 5 (1988), 75-82, esp. p. 81.
The theme of Everyman

A special case is the famous theme of Everyman. In the Netherlands
the Elckerlijc was written and published c. 1496 and in its full length
c. 1525.22 Elckerlijc is a text at the end of the fifteenth century, in which
mankind and the sense of its existence are viewed sub specie aeterni-
tatis. Every single human being has to render account for his deeds, as
the full title of the play runs: Den Spieghel der Salicheyt van Elckerlijc,
hoe dat elck mensche gedaeght wert rekeninghe te doen (‘The Mirror of
Everyman’s Salvation. How each man is summoned to give a reckoning to
God’). At God’s behest the allegorical figure of Death informs the prota-
gonist that he must go to the beyond and account for his life, but she is
not responsible for his departure, after all. It is a sober play, not requiring
many props and written in simple language and style, without the poetic
complexities often found in rhetoricians’ drama. Yet it is clearly part of
the rhetoricians’ tradition, by its allegorical and didactic presentation. Its
preoccupations with death, living well and dying well make it fit clearly
into the context of late fifteenth-century literature and art. In the course of
the play Elckerlijc, an urban man of approximately thirty years old, meets
a procession of allegorical characters who all fail to help him at the hour
of his death. The audience is shown that however great their sins, there is
still the chance, even in the ultimate hour, to repent, to be forgiven, and to
be saved. The play comprises among other things traditional praise of the
priests and the sacraments one may receive from them (ll. 661–726).23 But
on the other hand it also represents the grace that everybody may receive
from God when he heartily repents his sins.
This rhetoricians’ play was translated into English as Everyman,
and into Latin by the rector/headmaster of the Maastricht Latin school,
Christianus Ischyrius (Stercken), as Homulus, and by Macropedius, as
Hecastus (both 1539). Here we see that the humanist authors enriched the
play with elements of humanist education by using classical metres and
knowledge of Antiquity, its mythology and literature, in particular the
plays of Plautus and Terence.24 They also moulded the play into a five-act
22
Edited by Clifford Davidson et al., Everyman and Its Dutch Original, Elckerlijc
(Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007); see also my Transfer and Inte-
gration (n. 42).
23
See Willem Asselbergs, De stijl van Elkerlijk (Zwolle: Tjeenk Willink, 1968), p.
9; R. Vos, ‘Gemeenplaatsen rondom de priester in de Elckerlijc, bij Jan van Boendale,
Anthonis de Roovere en Cornelis Everaert’, in Ons Geestelijk Erf, 40 (1966), pp. 407–9.
24
For example, the messenger in the beginning speaks in asclepiadeic-choriambic
metres and his speech is full of references to ancient knowledge.
150 Jan Bloemendal
structure, each act consisting of several scenes. They contain thoughts

and phrases derived from classical authors, mainly Plautus and Terence,
but also from Horace, Ovid, and Seneca. They echo passages from the
Bible and the Church Fathers. The humanist authors added a prologue and
an epilogue in which the moralising is made explicit. In these respects
they adapted the theme to the ‘repertoire’ of humanism and the demands
of the Latin school, which required both acquisition of knowledge and
language, and moral lessons for education. Yet, there were differences
between the two adaptations.
Ischyrius often stayed close to the original.25 But he concretised it.
For instance, he replaced the personifications Gheselscap, Maghe and
Neve (friends and relatives) with characters who each have personal
names instead. However, he did not do this in all cases: Virtus, Forti-
tudo, Prudentia, Cognitio, and Quinisensus (Virtue, Strength, Prudence,
Knowledge and Five Senses) are still staged. The scope has altered a little.
While the title Elckerlijc (‘every individual’) stresses the inevitability of
death and the possibility of being saved (‘we all have to die’, but ‘remorse
may lead to salvation’), Homulus stresses the frailty of human life (‘we
are wont to sin and therefore afraid of death’).26 As Ischyrius himself says
in the Preface ‘To the pious reader and the candid youth’:
Habes, candide lector, comoediam non minus lepidam quam piam, quae
tametsi Terentij venustatem aut Plauti non redoleat eloquentiam, tamen
Christiani hominis vitam, mundique huius luxus fugacitatem, tanquam ex
quodam perpendiculo depingit & aestimat.
(Here you have, dear reader, a comedy that is both pleasant and pious. Yet,
although it does not have the taste or the charm of Terence and Plautus, it
depicts and weighs as in the balance the life of a Christian and the frailty
of this world’s wealth.)27
Ischyrius ‘catholicised’ the play, for the protagonist — Homulus, i.e.

every frail human being — turns to Maria who then prays to Christ for
25
On this play and its author, see Christianus Ischyrius, Homulus, ed. by Alphonse
Roersch (Ghent and Antwerp: La Librairie Néerlandaise, 1903). Cf., for example,
Homulus 833–4, ‘Illa in morem riuuli velociter labentis, / Illa te reddet puriorem defe-
catum scelere’, and Elckerlijc 486–7, ‘Si es een suver revier, / Sy sal u pureren’. See also
Gerrit Kalff, ‘Elckerlijc, Homulus, Hekastus, Every-man’, in Tijdschrift voor Nederland-
sche Taal- en Letterkunde, 9 (1890), 12–22. Ischyrius did not do very much to improve on
the weak structure of Elckerlijc (with its lack of climax), see Thomas W. Best, ‘Heralds
of Death in Dutch and German Everyman Plays’, in Neophilologus, 65 (1981), 397–403.
26
Cf. a laudatory poem by Eusebius Candidus (= Johannes Placentius, Jean Le
Plaisant, c. 1500–c. 1545): vita fugax hominis.
27
Ischyrius, Homulus, f. Aijr (ed. Roersch, p. 1).
Homulus.28 He also confesses his sins to a priest, sings the praises of

the seven sacraments, and refers to the doctrine of Transubstantiation.29
Further in Homulus Ischyrius renders more strictly the words of Vijf
Sinnen from Elckerlijc 721–3: ‘Ic hope, of God wil, dat niemant en doet.
/ Daer om laet ons die priester eeren / Ende volghen altijt haer leeren’ (I
hope, if God wills, that nobody does this [going to prostitutes]. There-
fore, let us honour the priests and always follow what they teach us), and
puts greater emphasis on the doctrine of the Church than the conduct
of its representatives: ‘We will hope for all that is better and indeed the
very best. May God prevent such immoral conduct. Let us respect them
[the priests] as the guardians of our souls and accept more their words
than their works, more their sayings than their examples.’30 A scene of
a confession to a priest is staged.31 This ‘catholicisation’ made the play
more accepted in Jesuit education. The same is true for the ‘classicisa-
tion’: Ischyrius added scenes, for instance a prologue, and adapted the
play to the language and style of Roman comedy.
Macropedius’s rendering was less true-blue ‘catholic’.32 This was
related to his own education at the schools of the Brethren of the Common
Life who practised Geert Grote’s devotio moderna. Macropedius himself
was one of these Brethren, who aimed at a practical religion, faith expres-
sing itself in good deeds, piety practised in copying sacred books and
illuminating them, but also in education of children and reading the Bible
every day. They displayed an aversion to dogmatism. In this atmosphere
Macropedius did not bother himself very much with the orthodox Roman
Catholic mainstream. While in Elckerlijc and Homulus the priests
summon their audience to do good deeds and to practise the Christian
life, and remind them that a sinner could only be redeemed by remorse,
28
Homulus, 908–23.
29
In Elckerlijc itself, the theme of confession and repentance is also shown, but more
indirectly: when Elckerlijc has visited Confession and has done penance for his sins, his
tears show his true repentance. Knowledge then hands him a cloak, which is called the
Garment of Sorrow. Putting on this cloak shows the moral of the play, namely that true
repentance is more important than confession.
30
Homulus, 1193–6: ‘Meliora opinabimur & optima quaeque, / Rem tanti incestus
auertat deus. / Nos illos vt animarum antistites reuereamur, / Magisque verba quam opera,
sermones quam exempla amplexemur.’
31
See, for example, Bernadette Verschelde, ‘Macropedius’ Hecastus, Ischy-
rius’ Homulus (1536) en Elckerlijc’, in Handelingen der Koninklijke Zuidnederlandse
Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis, 37 (1983), 235–54.
32
See Georgius Macropedius, Hecastus (1539) (ed. by Bernadette Verschelde) (Ghent,
unpublished ‘licentiaatsverhandeling’, 1981); Bernadette Verschelde, ‘Macropedius’
Hecastus: een herboren Elckerlyc’, in Didactica Classica Gandensia, 23 (1983), 215–49.
152 Jan Bloemendal
repentance and reform, and of course by confession and the Church, in

Hecastus things are less straightforward. Moreover, for the more learned
audience many quotations from the Bible and the Church Fathers expres-
sing the tenets of faith are given. In this respect, too, the humanist author
Macropedius went ad fontes. For instance, Elckerlijc’s soul goes to
heaven, while Hecastus goes to ‘the bosom of Abraham’ (an expression
found in Luke 18. 22). Elckerlijc gets help from Duecht and the sacra-
ments of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, Hecastus is strengthened by
the sacraments, but faith in God’s grace and Christ’s redeeming death is
presented as necessary for salvation (1065–6); Mary is hardly mentioned,
there is no penitence nor giving of alms.
Macropedius’s representation was also more realistic and graphic.33
Almost all allegorical figures are replaced by true-to-life characters.
Hecastus, for instance, has a wife and children, and servants. It is not
told, but shown, that Hecastus is too much attached to earthly goods. As
a result, the play is longer (1831 lines) than its predecessors. The moral
lessons for the audience are presented, and not only told: they should
follow in the footsteps of Hecastus’s relatives and better their lives. This
is a contrast with the Elckerlijc, in which the relatives just fail to help him.
The mirror is complete. Macropedius also invented a herald of Death,
named Nomodidascalus (‘teacher of the law’) who appears in Act II, the
appearance of Death herself is delayed until Act IV, and the peripeteia
commences only after her departure. Death returns and stabs Elckerlijc
in Act V.34
Macropedius, too, is inspired by the Roman comedies written by
Plautus and Terence. But contrary to Ischyrius, he adapts their style only
in the scenes where he thought it appropriate, and not in scenes with Faith
and Virtue. Hecastus’s friends seem to help him by giving him good
advice — cf. the friends of the Old Testament Job — and ironically refer
to others who might help him better. More realistic, too, is the presence
of a priest at the funeral.
Macropedius may have been inspired both by the adaptation of Elck-
erlijc by Ischyrius and by Elckerlijc itself. The latter — not always
acknowledged in secondary literature — is proved by the title page: ‘The
Hecastus by Macropedius, a play that is both pious and pleasant and in
which every sinful mortal (provided that he takes account of his salva-
tion) can see as in a mirror how he can obtain a godly and even joyous
33
On his play, see Giebels and Slits, Georgius Macropedius, pp. 252–66.
34
See, for instance, Best, ‘Heralds of Death’, pp. 397–8.
death through Christ after a real repentance of his sins.’35 In this title we
see the mirror and the salvation of the full title of Elckerlijc (‘Spieghel
der Salicheyt van Elckerlijc’). ‘Hecastus’ is also quite a faithful Greek
rendering for ‘Everyman’.36
Although Macropedius was not that faithful to Roman Catholic
doctrine, in 1552 and 1553, when he published his Omnes fabulae, he
reworked the play. While in the first version the protagonist Hecastus
found most consolation in faith, belief in Jesus Christ, in the second one
Macropedius inserted some lines and scenes in which he showed that he
adhered to the Church and its tenets and to the sacraments as the founda-
tion of salvation and consolation.
This had to do with the repressive measures the authorities took after
the rhetoricians’ feast in Ghent 1539.37 There the question to be answered
in dramatic form was ‘what is man’s consolation at the hour of his death’,
the same question as is the topic of Elckerlijc and its imitations. Some of
the plays that were performed there — and later on printed — gave refor-
mist answers to the question: ‘Christ’, or ‘faith’, instead of the sacraments,
the Church etc. Moreover, the Ecumenical Council of Trent (1545–63)
was also clearly meant to specify Catholic doctrines on salvation and the
sacraments, in reaction to the Protestant Reformation movements. Here,
too, we see that developments in local or regional society affected the
conception of a Latin play, although we must confess that Macropedi-
us’s alterations are not as drastic in a theological sense as he wants us to
believe they are.
The theme proved to be seminal in those times and found its way to
Germany through Macropedius’s play. Immediately after the publication
of Hecastus, the Lutheran pastor Thomas Naogeorgus wrote his Latin
35
‘Hecastus Macropedii, fabula non minus pia quam iucunda, in qua facinorosus
quisque mortalium (dummodo salutis suae rationem habebit) tanquam in speculo quodam
contemplari poterit, quemadmodum per Christum post veram suorum criminum poeni-
tudinem ad beatam adeoque laetam mortem perveniat’ [my emphasis].
36
There could be debate on the faithfulness of the title Hecastus, since the Greek
ἕκαστος is distributive (‘each man’), as is Elckerlijc, while the English Everyman is collec-
tive.
37
See Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘Printing Plays: The Publication of the Ghent Plays
of 1539 and the Reaction of the Authorities’, in Dutch Crossing, 24 (2000), 265–84.
On Macropedius and his fear of repercussions after the Ghent affair, see Frank Leys,
‘Macropedius ... leves et facetas fecit olim fabulas. Een opmerkelijke evolutie in de toneel-
stukken van Georgius Macropedius’, in Handelingen der Koninklijke Zuidnederlandse
Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis, 40 (1986), 87–96. See also my
‘Transfer and Integration’, esp. pp. 184-185.
154 Jan Bloemendal
tragicomedy Mercator (1540). He recast Macropedius’s play as Refor-

mation propaganda and dramatised the salvation of a sinful merchant
through God’s grace, whereas a prince, a Roman Catholic bishop, and a
Franciscan friar are all damned because they had trusted in good works.38
The Cologne printer Jaspar von Gennep reworked Ischyrius’s play into his
own Homulus, der sünden loin ist der Toid (1540) in German.39 The Jesuit
author Jacob Bidermann used the theme in his Cenodoxus (1602, also in
Latin) about a scholar who dies in vainglory without much comfort. Hans
Sachs adapted Hecastus into German as Ein Comedi, Von dem reichen
sterbenden Menschen, der Hecastus genannt (1549).40 Also Laurentius
Rappolt reworked it as Ein schön Christlich spiel, Hecastus genant (1552).
Cyriacus Spangeberg made a Hecastus (1564), as did Henricus Petrus
Rebenstock (Hecastus, ein geistlich Spiel van Ampt und Beruf eines jeden
Menschen, 1568). Johannes Stricerius made an adaptation of Gennep’s
play in De Düdesche Schlömer (1584), and Johann Schreckenberger wrote
a Georgii Macropedii Hecastus (1589). M. Abraham wrote Comoedia
germanica Hecastos seu Homulus (1591), indebted to both Hecastus
and Homulus. The Utrecht printer of the Omnes fabulae, Harmannus
Borculous was probably also the author of Een Comedie ofte Spel van
Homulus (c. 1608), an imitation of Ischyrius’s play. A Danish translation
of Hecastus was made in the seventeenth century, a Swedish remake by
Swen Bryngelson Dalius (1581) was made after the version of Laurentius
Rappolt. Indeed the theme was seminal. There is a curious translation of
the German adaptation by Jaspar von Gennep of the Hecastus and the
Homulus, itself an adaptation of Elckerlijc, entitled Een comedia ofte spel
van Homulus and made by Pieter van Diest.41 It is telling that Van Diest
took a German version of the Everyman-theme to be his model: the role
of Latin school drama had declined.
38
See Best, ‘Heralds of Death’, p. 399.
39
This is the title it received from the second edition onwards. The first edition had
as its title Der sünden loin ist der toid. It is based on Homulus and also on Elckerlijc,
Hecastus, and a play by Culmann, Ein Christenlich Teütsch Spiel, wie ein Sünder zur
Buss bekärt wirdt (1539), and another German play by Gengenbach, Spiel von den zehen
Altern (1515).
40
See Raphael Dammer and Benedikt Jeßing, Der Jedermann im 16. Jahrhun-
dert: die Hecastus-Dramen von Georgius Macropedius und Hans Sachs, Quellen und
Forschungen zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte, 42 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007), p. 276.
41
Amsterdam 1656; repr. 1661, ed. by J. W. van Bart (Utrecht: Den Boer, 1904),
University of Utrecht thesis.
The theme of King David

In view of all this, we should not conclude that Latin and vernacular fields
of literature are only one system.42 There are still differences, as we saw,
for example, in the adaptations of the Elckerlijc-theme, in which the Dutch
drama was remoulded into the shape of a Roman comedy. There is also
another difference. When we look at the plays about King David and his
family, plays written in the vernacular apply the theme far more easily to
topical matters and make David, Absolom, Nabal, etc. types for contem-
porary rulers.43 Of course, the David theme is often interpreted in a tropo-
logical, moral way, for instance in the play Saul (1617) by the Antwerp
painter, poet, and dramatist, Guiliam van Nieuwelandt, in which he warns
against recklessness and haughtiness and admonishes the audience to be
merciful as David was towards the reckless and haughty Saul. But often in
Dutch plays topicality was alluded to. In 1619 the Vlaardingen author Job
van de Wael, who was a factor of the local rhetoricians’ chamber, staged
and printed his Schiedams Rood-Roosjens Spel, van David ende Goliath
under the motto:
VVat eer den Prins behoort, die syn vyandt bestrede,
Met Waep’nen overwon’, en braght ’tgemeent’ tot vrede?
(What honour is due to a Prince who fought his enemies
And triumphed over them in war, and brought the people peace?)
Anyone who in the year 1619 — a time of quarrels between Remon-

strants and Counter-Remonstrants, between Johan van Oldenbarneveldt
and Prince Maurice of Orange — wrote a play with this motto, almost
compelled the audience to interpret the Prince as Prince Maurice, so
42
One could either put it in Bourdieusian terms of ‘fields of literary production’, that
are ‘competing’ and adding to one’s ‘social and cultural capital’, or in terms of ‘polysys-
tems’, a theory developed by the Israeli literary historian Itamar Even-Zohar, in which
the literary field is seen more outside of its social context, see Itamar Even-Zohar, ‘Poly-
system Theory’, in Poetics today, 1 (1979), 287–310, and my ‘Transfer and Integration
of Latin and Vernacular Drama in the Early Modern Period: The Case of Everyman,
Elckerlijc, Homulus, and Hecastus’, in Transfer and Integration, ed. by Els Andringa and
Sophie Levie, Arcadia, 44 (2009), 274-88.
43
See also my ‘König von Gottes Gnaden? der gute und der böse Monarch auf der
frühmodernen Bühne in den Niederlanden bis ca. 1625 anhand der Davidspiele’, in
Persons und Aktionstypen im Drama der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Christel Meier-Stau-
bach, Bart Ramakers, Hartmut Beyer (Münster: Rhema Verlag, in press). On king David
as an example, see Wolfram Washof, Die Bibel auf der Bühne: Exempelfiguren und
protestantische Theologie im lateinischen und deutschen Bibeldrama der Reformations
zeit (Münster: Rhema Verlag, 2007), passim.
156 Jan Bloemendal
that in the play David and Maurice are equated. Then, Goliath would be
Maurice’s enemy Van Oldenbarnevelt. Van de Wael made this typolo-
gical interpretation explicit in a dedication to Prince Maurice. A similar
typological interpretation, with topical implications, can be seen in Absa-
lom’s Treurspel by the Amsterdam playwright Gerbrand Smit, published
in 1620. To make a long story short: the authors of plays in the verna-
cular could easily allude to topical matters and identify biblical figures,
for instance King David, Absalom, Saul, with contemporary leaders. In
Latin drama this is only seldom done. Even if it were possible, the authors
simply did not do it. This is true of Gabriel Jansenius, rector of the Latin
school of a city in the southern Netherlands, Aalst (Alost), who wrote a
Monomachia Davidis cum Goliath and a Nabal, both printed in 1600.
His plays are very short, written for the school and merely showing the
biblical history. The Leiden humanist Rochus van den Honert tells in
the preface to his Thamar (1611) that he wished to explore King David’s
emotions on the rape of his daughter by Amnon and to give people a
(tropological) lesson on how to behave in one’s personal life:
Non haerebo in consideratione illius viri, qui solus omnem omnium vitam,
fortunam ac conditionem exemplo suae, sive divinae indulgentiae sive ca-
lamitatis humanae ratione possit instruere; ad eos transibo, quorum flagitiis
et contumelia in poenam illius (Davidem intelligo) usus est Deus.
(I will not dwell at length on that man who is uniquely instructive for every
man’s life, fortune and condition by the example of his own condition, with
respect to either divine grace or the wretchedness of mankind. I will rather
direct myself to those people whose infamies and defamation God used in
order to punish him (I mean David).)44
This is good for our personal life since:

Totaque haec actio nihil aliud est quam disciplina. Quid enim? Nonne te
Amnonis incestus amor claudere oculos ad vetitas illecebras docebit? Io-
nadabi versutia purpuratorum nebulonum nequitiam? Thamarae iniuria
parentum libidinem liberorum contumelia plerumque expiari? Absalomi
minae praetextus quos ambitio fraterno odio quaerit?
(This whole action is nothing else than a lesson. For the unchaste love of
Amnon will teach you not to look for forbidden temptations. Jonadab’s cle-
verness will show you the villainy of royal charlatans. The wrong done to
Thamar shows that the lust of fathers is often punished with injury done to
their children, and Absalom’s threats show what pretexts ambitious people
who hate their brothers are looking for.)45
44
Rochus Honerdus, Thamara, f. ***v.
45
Ibid.
A play like the Spul van Sinnen van de Siecke Stadt, written some
time between 1535 and 1574, that is among other things a satire on the
Amsterdam situation of ‘voorkoop’, or speculation with grain (i.e. buying
grain in times of plenty and selling it for a high price in times of scarcity),
and on the Roman Catholic municipal government and their repressive
measures against Anabaptists and other reformist and sacramentalist
movements, is hardly conceivable in a Latin play of that time.
Conclusion
The question we assessed here was whether vernacular drama and Latin
drama were separate literary fields or not. We may conclude that there are
both similarities and many possible relationships between drama in the
vernacular and in Latin, and dissimilarities, especially in form: the Latin
plays are more classical; and in interpretation: they are more general and
tropological in Latin, while Dutch plays are more specific and political.
These dissimilarities are connected with the intended audience and with
the aims of the plays. Latin drama was written to instruct the pupils of
the Latin schools or the students at the universities in Latin language and
moral behaviour, while Dutch drama aimed at a broader audience and
also wished to direct the people’s minds towards either a political or a reli-
gious standpoint. The two are different literary field, but literary history
in order to understand its own field should take into account the ‘other’
field too, because of matters of intertextuality and its impact on interpre-
tation, and because there were actual connections between authors who
wrote in the vernacular and those who wrote in Latin, between the Dutch
literary field and its Latin counterpart. In short, although the two were
different literary fields, and although Latin is Latin and Dutch is Dutch,
forever the twain shall meet.
E-mail: jan.bloemendal@huygens.knaw.nl
Cressida Ryan
An Ignoramus about Latin?
The importance of Latin Literatures to George
Ruggle’s Ignoramus
Although it now languishes in undeserved obscurity, George

Ruggle’s Ignoramus (1615) was one of the more splendid achieve-
ments of its own day and, without question, one of the most fa-
mous dramatic works of the early seventeenth century, especially
at the court of James I and among the intelligentsia.1
1. Introduction
George Ruggle’s Ignoramus is probably the best-known of the 150 Neo-
Latin plays written in England between 1550 and 1650 to survive.2 The
play premiered on 8 March 1615 at Trinity College, Cambridge, to enter-
tain James I. It drew an audience of two thousand and lasted six hours;
James enjoyed it so much that he ordered an immediate revival, and the
play was performed regularly until 1794.3 Since John Hawkins’s 1787
1
F. Parkhurst, A Critical Edition of Ferdinando Parkhurst’s ‘Ignoramus, the Academ-
ical Lawyer’, ed. by E. F. J. Tucker (New York: Garland Pub., 1987), p. xxii.
2
I thank the Master, Fellows and Scholars of Clare College, and Dr Hubertus Jahn and
Mrs Anne Hughes in particular, for enabling me to consult Ruggle’s books as left to the
College in his will, and David Money, Judith Mossman and Nick Wilshere for their help
with my work on Ruggle.
3
There are even suggestions that the play was used as bait to lure James to Cambridge
and balance the score with Oxford, which he had visited in both 1605 and 1614. G.
Ruggle, Ignoramus, Comoedia, ed. by J.S. Hawkins (London: T. Payne, 1787), p. xx.
For the origins of the university Latin play, see Anon., The Retrospective Review, XII:
The Latin Plays acted before the University of Cambridge (1825), pp. 1-42, Records of
Early English Drama: Cambridge, Vol. 1: The Records, ed. by A. H. Nelson (Univer-
sity of Toronto Press; Toronto: 1989), pp. 710-22, and J. W. Binns, Intellectual Culture
in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Latin Writings of the Age (Leeds: Francis
Cairns, 1990), pp. 120-40. On the audience and timing, cf. Hawkins (ed.), Ignoramus,
Comoedia, p. xxviii. Nelson (ed.), Records of Early English Drama, p. 716, provides a
plan of Trinity’s hall and its transformation into a theatre. On revivals, see G. Dyer, An
English Prologue and Epilogue to the Latin Comedy of Ignoramus; written by George
Ruggle [...] With a Preface and Notes Relative to Modern Times and Manners (London:
G.G. and J. Robinson, 1797). Except for the 1763 production at Merchant Taylor’s School,
early revivals were of the whole play and not an abridged version, in both English and
Latin; see J. L. Van Gundy, Ignoramus: Comoedia coram Regia Maiestate Jacobi Regis
Angliae: An Examination of its Sources and Literary Influence with Special Reference
to its Relation to Butler’s “Hudibras”, inaugural dissertation, University of Jena, 1905
(Lancaster, PA: New Era Printing Company, 1906), p. 9. For a summary of the play in the
160 Cressida Ryan
edition, however, there has been no modern edition of the play, apart from
Dana Sutton’s on-line 2000 one, which largely repeats Hawkins. It has
also received very little treatment from scholars, with most focusing on
its engagement with contemporary law and legal or religious language.4
In this article I consider its use of its Latin inheritance, and other cultural
models on which it draws. I first outline the usual approaches taken in
trying to understand this play, with a focus on Hilaire Kallendorf’s legal
and religious models. I then consider the different contributions made
by the relationship with mainly Latin texts as a way of reading Ruggle’s
poetics, arguing for a many-layered comedy where academic parody
lends much of the comic weight.
I start with a brief synopsis. In Bordeaux the youth Antonius falls in
love with Rosabella. Rosabella’s custodian, the Portuguese pimp Torcol,
arranges to give her in marriage to the ignorant lawyer Ignoramus.
Antonius enlists the help of his servant Trico to outwit Torcol, Ignoramus
and his own father Theodorus, who wants Antonius to fetch his mother
Dorothea, twin brother Antoninus and stepsister Catharina from London.
Instead, Trico diverts Rosabella’s aged, deaf nurse Surda, allowing
Antonius and Rosabella to start making their own plans. The parasite
Cupes and Friar Cola are brought in to help Antonius. They convince
people that Ignoramus is possessed and in need of exorcism. They trick
Ignoramus’s slave Dulman into taking Cupes’ wife Polla to Ignoramus
in place of Rosabella, and trick Torcol into giving Rosabella to Cupes
instead of Dulman. Antonius’s long-lost family arrives from London of
context of the royal visit and its reception, see S. Knight, ‘From Pedantius to Ignoramus:
University Drama at Oxford and Cambridge, 1580-1625’ (unpublished doctoral disserta-
tion, Yale University, 2002), pp. 184-86, 193-95, with thanks to Sarah Knight for giving
me a copy of her unpublished thesis.
4
Van Gundy, Ignoramus: An Examination of its Sources; E. F. J. Tucker, Intruder
into Eden: Representations of The Common Lawyer in English Literature 1350-1750,
Studies in English and American Literature, Linguistics and Culture, 2 (Columbia, SC:
Camden House, 1984), and his A Critical Edition of Ferdinando Parkhurst’s ‘Igno-
ramus’ and Renaissance Latin Drama; Knight, ‘From Pedantius to Ignoramus’; H.
Kallendorf, ‘Exorcism and the Interstices of Language: Ruggle’s Ignoramus and the
Demonization of Renaissance English Neo-Latin’, in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Canta-
brigiensis: Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies,
ed. by Jean-Louis Charlet et al. (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renais-
sance Studies, 2003), pp. 302-10. There are three contemporary translations of the play:
Parkhurst (1987), Codrington (1662) and Ravenscroft (1678): R. Codrington, Ignoramus:
A Comedy [...] with a supplement which (out of respect to the Students of Common Law)
was hitherto wanting (London: Printed for W. Gilbertson, 1662); E. Ravenscroft, The
English Lawyer: A Comedy (London: Printed by J.M. for J. Vade, 1678).
An Ignoramus about Latin? 161
their own accord with their servants Vince and Nell. They recognise that
Rosabella is really his long-lost adopted sister Isabella, who had been
promised to him in marriage. The good servant Trico is rewarded, and
Ignoramus is left in disgrace after his monastic incarceration.
The play is based mainly on Giambattista Della Porta’s La Trappo-
laria (1596), which draws on Plautus’s Pseudolus and Menaechmi.5
Ignoramus shows influences from all three plays, alongside other contem-
porary material in Latin and English, such as Much Ado About Nothing,
Bartholomew Fair, Club Law and Return from Parnassus. This mix of
Latin, Italian, English and Neo-Latin influences is essential for under-
standing Ignoramus’s comedy and success.
2. The Problem
Ignoramus satirises Neo-Latin, but is itself written in Neo-Latin;6 this
is the basic problem which Hilaire Kallendorf tries to answer in her two
articles on Ignoramus. She offers a selection of explanations, to be read
alongside each other. It is not Neo-Latin itself that is being satirised, but
poor practitioners of it. These form two main groups: lawyers and Catho-
lics. The legal jargon spouted by Ignoramus is a nonsensical corruption of
an otherwise blameless language. The mock exorcism parodies Catholic,
particularly Jesuit, exorcism (and by extension general) practices. She
concludes: ‘Perhaps it would even be no exaggeration to say that England
was mourning the loss of Catholic Latin learning at the same time as it
was celebrating the Protestant’s new-found freedom of conscience’.7 Her
solution may fit with the other work she has done on exorcisms in litera-
ture, but it seems to provide only a partial model for understanding this
play. By tying the play to specific cases of legal and Catholic practices,
she fails to reconcile the conflicting contextual interpretations.
There was a long-standing town-gown dispute in Cambridge which had
come to a head in 1611, when the Vice-Chancellor of the University had
5
Tucker (ed.), Parkhurst’s ‘Ignoramus’, p. xxxiv. On the relationship between La
Trappolaria and Ignoramus, see Knight, ‘From Pedantius to Ignoramus’, pp. 188-89
and L. Clubb, Giambattista Della Porta: Dramatist (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1965).
6
Kallendorf, ‘Exorcism and the Interstices of Language’, pp. 305-06. On the link
between Catholic exorcism, magic and the presence of the devil in the early seventeenth
century, see K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs
in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971),
pp. 85, 88, 583, 587. On the particular danger of Jesuits to English university life, see
Knight, ‘From Pedantius to Ignoramus’, p. 200.
7
Kallendorf, ‘Exorcism and the Interstices of Language’, p. 309.
162 Cressida Ryan
won precedence over the Mayor. The Mayor’s lawyer was one Francis
Brakyn, Recorder, who was satirised in both Club Law and Return from
Parnassus. Common lawyers were viewed as anti-academic and unintel-
ligent, with Brakyn as a particular example, satirised here in the figure
of Ignoramus himself.8 On the national level, the acrimony between Sir
Edward Coke, the Lord Chief Justice, and James I was reaching its peak,
and Coke was guaranteed to be present in the audience, making Igno-
ramus also a likely analogue for him.9 As Dyer suggests, however, ‘The
Epilogue is designed as a satire against systems, rather than persons,
though the contrary may seem the case’.10 Understanding Ignoramus is
not simply about decoding the allegory as satire against particular indivi-
duals, be they national or local figures.
3. A Solution?
The play’s universal appeal and enduring popularity may be partly
explained through its use of its classical heritage and comic tensions that
result. I begin by considering the contribution made by lines borrowed
from previous Latin texts, mostly as noted by Hawkins and Sutton. I then
expand my reading to include some of the models lying behind the texts
and some further contextual points.
To start with the lines quoted from previous texts: there was no inherent
need for Ruggle to include any fragments of Classical Latin in his play,
but it is rich in them. Hawkins notes lines taken from Martial,11 Virgil,
Catullus, Juvenal, Petronius, Terence, Publilius Syrus, Ovid, Lucan, Cato,
Plautus, Horace, Persius and Statius.12 Sutton adds some commentary on
8
Hawkins (ed.), Ignoramus, Comoedia, pp. xii-xiii, xxix; Tucker (ed.), Parkhurst’s
‘Ignoramus’, p. xlix.
9
Staging the Renaissance: Reinterpretations of Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama,
ed. by David Scott Kastan and Peter Stallybrass (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 196; M. A.
Kishlansky, A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603-1714 (London: Allen Lane, 1996),
p. 27. On this interplay between local and London satire, see Knight, ‘From Pedantius to
Ignoramus’, pp. 176-78, 187-88.
10
Dyer, An English Prologue and Epilogue, p. 9.
11
There is a problem whenever lines from Martial are mentioned. The numbering
of the Martial poems has changed since the seventeenth century. The Chorus Poetarum
Classicorum, Duplex Sacrorum et Profanorum, ed. by Alexandre Fichet (Leiden: Ludo-
vicus Muguet, 1616) and Ruggle’s own edition (1553, J’.3.34 in the Fellows’ Library of
Clare College) differ from the standard modern numbering, significantly but not entirely.
Ruggle’s own edition shows annotation at several of the lines used in the play. Approxi-
mately half of the Martial quotations are annotated in Ruggle’s copy.
12
See Hawkins, Ignoramus, Comoedia, footnotes throughout, the list being his ‘order
of appearance’. For the classical texts read at the time and their influence, see T. W.
Ciceronian influences. Ruggle marks almost none of these as intertexts by

means of conventional phrases such as ‘fama est…’.13 The only example
of such a device is for Ignoramus himself. Ignoramus is allotted just one
obvious intertext: ‘Lucanus ait…’ (1783), quoting Pharsalia, VII. 217.
This is the only quotation from Lucan in the play. Ignoramus’s line is thus
doubly marked: it is an unusual text at odds with the satirical nature of the
rest of the play, and Ignoramus cannot integrate it into his speech, being
too ill at ease with classical learning to do so.
I suggest that other intertexts are used in a similar way to mark charac-
ters and the nature of their learning. There are eight quotations from
Publilius Syrus’s collection of sententiae; five are given to Rosabella, one
to Dorothea, one to Antonius and one to Trico. Rosabella has very few
further intertexts, leaving her speech marked by sententiae. I suggest that
sententiae mark female speech, in particular the love story between Rosa-
bella and Antonius. This makes sense of Antonius’s one sententia, which
comes at the resolution of the love story. Women are otherwise denied
a voice of learning. Polla, Surda, Catherina and Nell do not have any
intertexts, and none of the satirical lines from Martial, Juvenal or Persius
which so characterise this play are given to women. Latin culture is thus
marked as an educated man’s world.14
4. Individual lines
One particularly interesting line in the play comes in Act II, Scene 6, and
demonstrates this male learning.
TRICO Vel talem autem in scaenam prodire nefas.
MUSAEUS ‘Totus mundus exercet histrionem.’
Baldwin, William Shakspere’s Small Latine and Lesse Greek (Urbana, IL: University
of Illinois Press, 1944), G. Highet, The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influ-
ences on Western Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), R. R. Bolgar, The Classical
Heritage and its Beneficiaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), and Clas-
sical Influences on European Culture, A.D.1500-1700, ed. by R. R. Bolgar (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1976).
13
Given the mix of prose and verse in the play, all the quotations can be absorbed on
a metrical level. On the prose-verse mix of the play, see the on-line edition of Ignoramus
by Dana F. Sutton (2000) at http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/ruggle/ (last accessed
31.06.2008). Van Gundy, Ignoramus: An Examination of its Sources, p. 19, also gives a
brief metrical analysis of the play. For classical methods for marking intertextuality, see S.
Hinds, Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998).
14
On the relationship between linguistic register and character in Jacobean comedy in
general, see Knight, ‘From Pedantius to Ignoramus’, pp. 181-82.
164 Cressida Ryan
TRICO Musaee, iam philosophatum est satis. Dic iam, herus tuus Ig-
noramus quid agit?
TRICO No good comes from leading such a man to the stage.

MUSAEUS The whole world provides work for the actor.
TRICO Musaeus, that’s enough philosophising now. Tell me, what’s
your master Ignoramus up to?
(Ruggle, Ignoramus, 960-6215)
Hawkins attributes this to the 1669 edition of Petronius edited by Hadri-

anides in Amsterdam: ‘Non duco contentionis funem, dum constet inter
nos, quod fere totus mundus exercet histrionem.’16 This edition, however,
postdates Ignoramus by over fifty years. The fragment does not appear
in modern editions of Petronius. It first appears in the 1610 edition, and
not since the 1862 Buecheler edition doubting its Petronian authenticity.
It is unclear whether Ruggle was reading the 1610 edition, or any other
source.17 Either way, it is perhaps the most learned quotation in the play,
with an uncertain textual history at the time, drawing on recent editions;
it also lies behind the Globe’s motto ‘Totus Mundus Agit Histrionem’, and
‘All the world’s a stage’ in As You Like It, II. 7. 139.18 With such a weight
of learning behind it, this seems to be the perfect intertext for the one
markedly learned character in the play, Musaeus.19
One clear point to come from the Petronian confusion is that Ruggle
does not borrow lines exactly. Sutton notes several points where Ruggle has
changed just one word: for example, ‘Ibit ab excusso missus ad astra sago’
(He heads to the stars sent up from a shaken blanket (Ruggle, Ignoramus,
694)) for Martial’s ‘Ibis ab excusso missus ad astra sago’ (Epigrams, I.
3. 8).20 Another comes at line 1768: ‘Sed quid fecerunt…?’ (But what
15
All translations are my own. Translations of lines from Ignoramus are loose in order
to convey the sense and spirit of the Neo-Latin more clearly. All references to the play are
from Hawkins (ed.), Ignoramus, Comoedia.
16
Titi Petronii Arbitri Equitis Romani Satyricon [...] Concinnante Michaele Hadri-
anide (Amsterdam: Typis Ioannis Blaeu, 1669), p. 520.
17
There is no copy of Petronius in Ruggle’s collection at Clare College, Cambridge.
18
Although note that Tucker suggests that Shakespeare derived his lines from Palin-
genius’s Zodiacus Vitae (see Parkhurst’s ‘Ignoramus’, p. 272).
19
Knight, ‘From Pedantius to Ignoramus’, pp. 191-92 notes the focus on Musaeus as
the only learned figure in the play, but she does not closely relate this to the text.
20
M. V. Martialis: Epigrammata, ed. by W.S. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1929).
have they done?), echoing Martial’s ‘Aut quid fecerunt?’ (Epigrams, I.

75. 4). The first quotation may also recall the contemporary lyrics to the
song Lilliburlero: ‘There was an old woman toss’d up in/on a blanket |
Seventeen times as high as the moon’.21 The second may be too subtle to be
noted as a direct allusion. Neither example is clearly a reference to a Latin
text alone. The multiple layers of reference, or potential for passing over,
however, both add to the text’s intricate play with its learning. In terms
of their deviation from the originals, they could be misquotations from
memory, or suggestions that we should look beyond Latin allusions for
interpretation. Most of Ruggle’s quotations are accurate, and his margi-
nalia in his copies suggest that he was careful in planning his work, as
many of the lines quoted are annotated. He was also writing a new work;
there was no need for him to incorporate lines at these points, if they
needed changing to make sense, as in the first example; in the second,
the change makes little difference to the sense, and is thus again unne-
cessary. These slight changes mean that only the more educated listener
or reader will pick up the references, heightening the sense of collusion
between audience and playwright or actor, and the sense of exclusion for
those who fail to pick up the references. I suggest that these slight changes
are therefore deliberate and are another small-scale way in which Ruggle
draws his educated audience into his literary web.
5. Writing, writers, reading and learners

In order to understand what Ruggle may have been trying to do with Igno-
ramus, we must also consider what the play tells us about the process of
play-making. Plautus’s Pseudolus, on which Ignoramus is partly based,
is perhaps the most metatheatrical of Plautus’s plays, thus also inviting
metatheatrical interpretations of its descendants. The introduction to
Ignoramus ends, ‘Est truthum, et totum truthum, et nihil nisi truthum: Ite,
te, lector, lawyers adjubet’.22 This non-Latin opening provides a program-
matic example of how Ignoramus will play with Latin. It may be a parody
of court proceedings, but such an ostentatious claim to truth from a play
immediately invites a comic audience to start trying to read the perfor-
mance on metatheatrical terms.
In what ways might a metatheatrical analysis of the play contribute
to our understanding of its use of its Latin heritage? A few comments
21
Thanks to Nick Wilshere for alerting me to this point.
22
Hawkins (ed.), Ignoramus, Comoedia, p. 6. ‘Ite, te, lector’ may also refer to the
opening of Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, adding a further layer of intertextuality with a new
text, that is too complex to investigate here.
166 Cressida Ryan
will suffice. Alison Sharrock has demonstrated how letters are important
metatheatrical tools to be used in understanding Pseudolus.23 Letters and
signs also play an important part in Ignoramus. The prologues include a
letter about the play, between two characters called Dulman, one being
Ignoramus’s clerk; Ignoramus is first seen in the prologue giving an order
to write in Latin to the Pope about becoming a cardinal; within the play,
at Act I, Scene 2 he worries about a miswritten writ; he leaves Rosabella
with verses he has written for her which become an important prop in the
deception plot.
Ignoramus, then, is the character who writes, the director of a script;
the servus callidus responsible for the development of the plot, however,
is Trico. The internal conflict between Ignoramus and Trico as directors
is paralleled in the very naming of the play, since the title (role) has been
changed. For Plautus it is the servus callidus Pseudolus, for Della Porta
it is Trappola’s actions; for Ruggle it becomes the rival Ignoramus’s play.
The nomenclature is not accidental, even etymologically.24 Pseudolus
carries the double etymology of deceit and trickery, whilst a trappola is a
trap in Italian. In its eponymity, Ignoramus is in part moving away from
the centrality of deceit to the play, and is instead challenging us to be, or
not to be, ignorami.25
Plautus, however, is not the sole influence behind this play, nor indeed
is Latin in general. Ruggle was not only proficient in Latin, but, as is
noted by his biographers, also knew Greek, French and Italian.26 This
multilingualism is a topic of debate in Ignoramus. In the first prologue,
the caballus comments on knowing ῾Ελληνικήν, Latinam, Françoise,
Castalliana, Italiana, Teuch, Polaski’ (35-36).27 Why are these languages
associated with the play? Latin is the main topic of this essay. French is
the result of the setting, Bordeaux. Castellan pays some tribute to Torcol’s
23
A. Sharrock, ‘The Art of Deceit: Pseudolus and the Nature of Reading’, Classical
Quarterly, 46 (1996), 12-74. On metatheatre in Plautus more generally, see N. Slater,
Plautus in Performance: The Theatre of the Mind (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1985); for letters in Pseudolus, pp. 119 and 133.
24
On names, name tags, naming and the roles of editors in naming conventions
of dramatis personae in Renaissance drama, see R. Cloud, ‘“The Very Names of the
Persons”: Editing and the Invention of Dramatick Character’, in Staging the Renaissance,
ed. by David Scott Kastan and Peter Stallybrass (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 88-96,
and W. Riehle, Shakespeare, Plautus, and the Humanist tradition (Cambridge: D.S.
Brewer, 1990), p. 173.
25
For Ruggle as the nominaliser of the term ignoramus, see Oxford English Dictionary.
26
Hawkins (ed.), Ignoramus, Comoedia, p. viii.
27
Hawkins (ed.), Ignoramus, Comoedia, p. 9.
Spanish / Portuguese mix.28 Italian pays tribute to the play’s origins in

La Trappolaria. The remaining three – Greek, German and Polish – are
more puzzling.
There are several possible reasons behind the German. The second
prologue, and then a scene in which Cupes, as a bookseller, mocks
contemporary culture, poke fun at the German scholar Schoppius (see
also the prologus posterior). To mention the German language reinforces
German scholars as suitable objects of parody. Ruggle’s biographers do
not suggest that he read any German. However, the 1908 catalogue of
his books at Clare College includes an edition of Cato De Re Rustica
published in Frankfurt in 1620, in which the Index of Words at the end
has several German equivalents given.29 Whether Ruggle could read the
German or not, his own book collection demonstrates his awareness of
the language, and not simply of German scholars’ Neo-Latin. Neo-Latin
drama was also very popular in Germany, and with Jesuits, especially
Polish ones.30 Given that the play satirises Jesuits as a particular kind of
Catholic, the reference to Polish makes more sense. If we accept that the
German and the Polish are both pointing us towards an extra-textual and
contextual reading of the play, then Greek makes sense in completing
the list of languages with which Ruggle was familiar. The number of
languages mentioned and the relative unfamiliarity of Greek in the early
seventeenth century also suggests a degree of academic pretentiousness
which is in keeping with the general tenor of the play.
The list is then echoed in Act II, Scene 6, when Musaeus sets Trico a
riddle:
MUSAEUS Quid illud est, quod iure vivit et iniuria;
Quod magni-pusillanimum; quod ambidexter et bifrons;
Quod multa dicit et nihil; quod ioca serio, seria ioco;
Quod Anglice, Saxonice, Gallice, et Latine loquitur,
Neque tamen Anglice, neque Saxonice, neque Gallice, neque
Latine loquitur;
Quod leges scribit ne sient captiones; quod captiones
Scriptitat ne sient leges; quod finitum facit
Infinitum; verum non verum, non verum verum facit?
28
Ruggle owned a copy of some Seneca translated into Castellan Romance, suggesting
his familiarity with the language: volume B.610.36 in the 1908 catalogue of Clare College
Fellows’ Library.
29
Volume K.8.16 in the 1908 catalogue of Clare College Fellows’ Library.
30
Highet, The Classical Tradition, p. 135.
168 Cressida Ryan
MUSAEUS What is it, which lives justly and unjustly;

Which is noble and cowardly; which is two-handed and two-
faced;
Which says both much and nothing; which jokes seriously, is
serious jokingly;
Which speaks English, German, French, and Latin,
Yet speaks neither English, German, French, nor Latin;
Which writes laws to stop arguments, arguments
To stop laws; which makes the finite
Infinite; the truth untrue, the untruth, true?
This list of languages mirrors the prologue’s minus Greek and Polish;
these are the languages whose inclusion in the prologue contribute to
a contextual rather than intratextual interpretation of the play and thus
their exclusion is understandable here. It is thus possible to read the list
of languages in the prologue programmatically, as indicating to us that
we should read the play metatheatrically, and on multiple interpretative
levels.
The intertextual and intratextual use of characters continues this theme.
The caballus who speaks the prologue lines is Davus Dromo. Hawkins
and Sutton offer two explanations for the horse: ‘Hawkins explains that
James’s favourite jester was named David Droman (or Drummond); at the
same time, Davy’s Latinised name sounds like the Greek word for “run”,
and so suggests he is a runaway.’31 He is more significant, however, than a
passing familiar name. He also appears, alongside Schoppius, in Cupes’
bookselling scene:
CUPES Immo apage omnes. Sunt Annales Volusi: mais quoy vanno
via manniconia. Habeo tamen aliquot quantivis pretii. Prologus
Caballinus,
sive Metamorphosis Messe Davy de Dromedariis; item eiusdem
Milleloquium ad Caenam; Hostiludium de Messe Davy cum Ar-
chy de
Archivis; eiusdem Peregrinationes Syncoriaticae.
CUPES Get away with all these! There are the Annales of Voluses: mais
quoy vanno via manniconia. I’ve also got something else, name
your price: The Hobbyhorse’s Prologue or The Metamorphosis
of Mr Davy de Dromedariis; and by the same author, A thousand
31
Sutton, http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/ruggle/, note to line 6. See also Van
Gundy, Ignoramus: An Examination of its Sources, p. 17.
things to say at dinner; The hostilitude between Mr Davy and

Archy de Archivis; and likewise The Syncoriatic Peregrinations.
We are thus doubly (if retrospectively) encouraged to read anything invol-

ving the caballus as metatheatrical. This is reinforced when we note that
the character ‘Davus’ is one of Roman comedy and satire himself. He
appears as a character in Terence’s Andria, another play which supplies
intertexts for Ignoramus, where there is also a character ‘Dromo’, and
in Horace’s Satires, I. 10. 40, II. 5. 91-92, and II. 7.32 He also appears
in Persius, V. 161-74, a section based on Menander’s Eunuchus. He
thus functions as a satirical slave, drawing Ignoramus into the wake of
Terence, Horace and Persius, but only for those with enough knowledge
to recognise the allusion.
6. Sentiments and sections

I have discussed some very specific verses, and some very general points
of correspondence between Ignoramus and both its contemporary context
and Latin literature. I now turn to some further examples of allusion in
a broader sense. I start with Catullus and a borrowing Hawkins acknow-
ledges at line 489:
ANTONIUS Quis potest pati hoc? Quis potest videre?
ANTONIUS Who could endure this? Who could watch it?
(Ruggle, Ignoramus, 489)
Quis hoc potest videre? Quis potest pati ?
(Catullus, Poems, 29.133)
This slight rearrangement of words is the furthest Hawkins allows Ruggle

to deviate from his models. Given this overt Catullan presence in the play,
might we be justified in seeking less immediately obvious ‘borrowings’?
Consider the following lines from Act I, Scene 6:
32
For example, ‘Davus perturbat omnia’ (Prologue, 132), cf. Andria 601: ‘iam pertur-
bavi omnia’. Also, ‘tu vero ut subservans’ (1830) from Andria 735, and ‘Abi, Trico,
suspende te’ (2805) cf. Andria, 255: ‘abi cito ac suspende te’.
33
Catullus, The Poems, ed. by Kenneth Quinn (London: Macmillan, 1970).
170 Cressida Ryan
TRICO O lactea labella, nasum purpureum, gemmeam cutem, oculos

ovillos, crusculum
formicae, vituli pedes, manus talpae, pectus cicadae, mammas
mammarum: equula
adhinniens, scrofula grunniens, ahime!
SURDA Formam laudas, scio. Pulchra sum satis, diis gratia.
TRICO O pumila, nanula, surdula, crassula, dolioriola, anicula, bi-
bosula, barbatula, simiola.
Ahime.
TRICO O milky-white lips, ruby nose, sparkling skin, ovine eyes, for-
micine calf, bovine feet, mole-like hand, cicadan chest, ma-
ternal breast: equine whiny, porcine grunt, oh!
SURDA I just know you’re praising my beauty. I am beautiful enough,
thanks be to the gods.
TRICO O pigmy, dwarf, deaf-ears, stupid, tricky, old, drunken, bear-
ded little ape. Oh!
The mamma mammarum in particular are related to Martial: ‘Mammas

atque tatas habet Afra, sed ipse tatarum | Dici et manumarum maxima
mamma potest’ (I. 100). The terms of abuse levelled at the deaf crone
Surda in general, however, are also reminiscent of those found in Catullus
43:
salve, nec minime puella naso
nec bello pede nec nigris ocellis
nec longis digitis nec ore sicco
nec sane nimis elegante lingua,
decoctoris amica Formiani.
ten provincia narrat esse bellam?
tecum Lesbia nostra comparatur?
o saeclum insapiens et infacetum.
(Greetings, girl with the not short nose nor pretty foot nor smoky eyes nor
long fingers nor dry mouth nor elegant enough tongue, girlfriend of that
bankrupt of Formio. Does that province say you’re pretty? Is my Lesbia
compared to you? Oh foolish and witless race!)
The Catullan terms are reinterpreted in much more visual ways, through
comparison with animals rather than Catullus’s negatives, so that ‘nec
longis digitis’ becomes ‘manus talpae’. The general picture is increased
by mocking even Surda’s voice. When Catullus departs from comments

concerning physical features, it is to highlight a girl’s intelligence, or
rather lack of it:
Quintia formosa est multis. mihi candida, longa,
recta est: haec ego sic singula confiteor.
totum illud formosa nego: nam nulla venustas,
nulla in tam magno est corpore mica salis.
Lesbia formosa est, quae cum pulcerrima tota est,
tum omnibus una omnis surripuit Veneres.
(Catullus, 86)
(Quintia seems beautiful to many. To me she seems fair, tall and stately. I do
admit these individual graces. But I can’t admit this all makes beauty: for
there is no charm, no grain of wit in even that large body. Lesbia is beauti-
ful, who is not only so wholly lovely, but has single-handedly stolen all the
charms of Venus from all women.)
As a relentless list, Ruggle’s invective carries a greater cumulative force,

starting ambiguously with Surda’s delicate features, but degenerating
abusively, a switch again found in Catullus 86. Ruggle has taken the
Catullan example to an extreme, for increased comic effect. It is amusing
to hear Surda think she is being praised without detecting any allusion to
Catullus, but if we can read a Catullan influence, then the joke also func-
tions on a second level, as we recognise and understand the parody of the
source. If we bear Catullus 86 in mind, then we can perhaps read Surda’s
deafness as a physical demonstration of her inability to engage with the
communicative world of academic learning, a physical way of demonstra-
ting the lack of any ‘mica salis’. The satire against Surda thus stands as a
warning to the audience that they need to engage their brains and think,
not just assume they are being flattered by what they are witnessing on
stage.34 This parody of sources is evident in other ways in both this scene
and the play in general.
An awareness of this subtle parodying of Catullan sources also leads
us towards a more sophisticated understanding of Ruggle’s relationship
with his Della Portan original. A secret sign between Torcol and Igno-
34
By choosing Catullus as a model, Ruggle also locates himself in a tradition of
concise satire, of libelli. When Cupes tries to sell his useless libelli in Act II, Scene 3, we
may perhaps detect a further reference to Catullan poetics. On the relationship between
ugly women, marriage, and coughing, also see Martial, Epigrams I. 10, and II. 26. This
perhaps links Surda’s coughs with satirical literature on ugliness in Latin.
172 Cressida Ryan
ramus is agreed at Act I, Scene 4. In La Trappolaria, Dentifrangolo is

only supposed to touch Lucrino’s nose, not pull it. This gesture is magni-
fied into a comic yank of the nose by Ruggle, adding a level of slapstick
comedy to the deception scene. Given the influence of such writers as
Catullus, we may read even further into the gesture, the Roman ‘nasum’
being allegorical for the phallus, a reading which would ensure an even
more comical scene. This would also inflate the terror Ignoramus is feeling
after supposedly being threatened with gelding by Antonius earlier in
the play, which results in Dulman being sent for Rosabella, enabling the
deception to be carried out.35
7. Conclusion
Louise Clubb describes Ruggle’s shifts from Della Porta’s original as
dramatically deviant and destructive. For Clubb, La Trappolaria is the
perfect Plautine play, the arrangement of Plautine material that Plautus
never managed.36 She claims,
Ignoramus bears no resemblance to the dark comedies of Della Porta’s mid-
dle period. It arouses no meraviglia, neither by its examples of extraordinary
virtue or feeling, nor by its own extraordinary form. The exact proportions
and choreographic perfection of Trappolaria are lost. Instead, Ignoramus
offers simultaneously a rather tedious love story and a boisterous satire.37
Rather than destroying some perfect play, we need to read Ruggle as

creating the perfect play for his own environment. The meraviglia of his
composition lies in the way he managed to create a Neo-Latin comedy in
the English manner. As Edward Tucker notes, Ignoramus is an adapta-
tion, not a slavish translation.38 Della Porta died in 1615, the year of Igno-
ramus’s performance, leaving Ignoramus as a part of the next generation
of drama. Neo-Latin drama in the universities was extremely popular
at the time. Yet, it was not necessarily the macaronic language of Igno-
ramus which appealed. Jensen notes how humanist grammarians tried
to purge Latin of its neologisms.39 Binns adds how contemporary Neo-
35
The theme of gelding also links Ignoramus to Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus and
Curculo. On the sexual connotations of nasus, see J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabu-
lary (London: Duckworth, 1982), pp. 35 and 98. He does not link the phallus and nasus,
but poems such as Catullus 13 would suggest that this must be possible.
36
Clubb, Giambattista Della Porta, p. 280.
37
Clubb, Giambattista Della Porta, p. 283.
38
Tucker (ed.), Parkhurst’s ‘Ignoramus’, p. x.
39
K. Jensen, ‘The Humanist Reform of Latin and Latin Teaching’, in The Cambridge
Latin writers would generally strive for Augustan Latin, and ‘in addition,
the dramatists have a sense of form. They employ fewer irrelevant sub-
plots than the contemporary playwrights, and hardly any scenes make no
contribution to the development of the play’.40 This is not what we find in
Ignoramus. Instead, we uncover a multiplicity of plots expressed through
corrupt Latin intermingled with a host of other linguistic fragments. Not
only Plautus and Della Porta, but also Shakespeare and Jonson influence
it. Might this incongruity perhaps be the key to understanding Igno-
ramus’s success? James I had banned any plays in English from being
performed within a five-mile radius of Cambridge.41 This was supposedly
to prevent any bawdy behaviour from undergraduates that would accom-
pany such productions. Indeed, undergraduates were barred from Igno-
ramus, and people were admitted according to academic rank.42 With
Ignoramus, Ruggle managed to outwit the king’s restrictions by presen-
ting an English-style comedy, written in Latin.43
The comedy therefore functioned on a number of levels. Lawyers were
parodied, which, for the academic home audience could be read as a jibe
at Brackyn and his fellow common lawyers in Cambridge, but for the
king could also be read as commenting on Coke. Catholic religious prac-
tices in Latin were parodied, as befitted a Protestant clergyman, but there
may also have been a sense of loss implied through the loss of learning
resultant from denying Catholic Latin. The play also used some deci-
dedly un-Catholic Latin texts to reinforce contemporary social stereo-
types, including the failure of lawyers to cope in an academic world. This
recourse to Classical Latin simultaneously satisfied and parodied the
desire for the drama to be an example of learned culture. Its comic effect
was therefore also due to the way in which it abused previous texts to
create bawdy jokes, whilst maintaining the academic practice of cultural
borrowing. For those who could recognise these borrowings and the way
in which they had been manipulated, the comedy was thus even greater.
Ruggle therefore pandered to the king’s renowned love of learning, whilst
ensuring a bawdy comedy which circumvented the restrictions on English
Companion to Renaissance Humanism, ed. by J. Kraye (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, 1996), pp. 63-81 (69).
40
Binns, Intellectual Culture, p. 124.
41
Van Gundy, Ignoramus: An Examination of its Sources, p. 13.
42
Nelson (ed.), Records of Early English Drama, p. 717.
43
On Ruggle as thus satirising the king’s pride in scholarship, see Knight, ‘From
Pedantius to Ignoramus’, p. 203.
174 Cressida Ryan
comedy within Cambridge. James I had no other choice but to laugh at

Ruggle’s ingenuity, as generations after him have also done.
E-mail: cressida.ryan@merton.ox.ac.uk
Sarah Knight
‘Et spes et ratio studiorum in Caesare tantum’:
Robert Burton and Patronage
In The Anatomy of Melancholy (first published in 1621), Robert Burton,

Christ Church scholar and Latin playwright, described his monarch’s
behaviour at the Bodleian Library during a progress to Oxford in late
August 1605:
King James 1605, when he came to see our University of Oxford, and
amongst other Ædifices, now went to view that famous Library, renued by
Sr Thomas Bodley, in imitation of Alexander, at his departure brake out
into that noble speech, If I were not a King, I would be an University man.1
Burton took his anecdote of James’s self-presentation here as philosopher-

king from the official account written by Oxford’s public orator Isaac
Wake, Rex Platonicus, which Burton owned.2 Wake describes a scholarly
king ‘wandering at length and diligently through the library’ (‘Biblio-
thecâ [...] diu sedulóque perlustratâ’), ‘imitating that choice of Alexander
the Great both in intention and voice’ (‘& animo, & voce eam Alex. Magni
imitaretur optionem’), who declares, finally, that ‘if he had not been
James, he could have been a scholar here’ (‘si Iacobus non fuisset, posset
hic esse Academicus’ (p. 187)). Wake’s James imagines himself as a
willing prisoner of the Bodleian: ‘I could have been led as a prisoner, and
if I had had the choice, I would have longed to be shut up in this prison,
and bound with these chains’ (‘captivus ducar, si mihi optio daretur, hoc
cuperem carcere concludi, his catenis illigari’). James of course was very
interested in academic learning, both before and after his accession in
1
Burton cites Isaac Wake as his authority: see Burton, Anatomy, note m, II, 88,
and (commentary) VI, 434. For Burton’s ownership of Wake’s account, see Nicolas K.
Kiessling, The Library of Robert Burton (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1988),
p. 317 (no. 1678). References to the Anatomy, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from
the Clarendon Edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. by Thomas C. Faulkner,
Nicolas K. Kiessling and Rhonda L. Blair; commentary by J. B. Bamborough and Martin
Dodsworth, 6 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989-2000).
2
Isaac Wake, Rex Platonicus: sive, de potentissimi principis Jacobi Britanniarum
regis, ad illustrissimam academiam Oxoniensem, adventu (Oxford: Joseph Barnes,
1607). All references to Wake are from the 1607 edition.
176 Sarah Knight
1603,3 and his odd metaphor was probably interpreted by his audience as
rueful, perhaps even genuine. But while Wake’s account is clearly pane-
gyric, both in the Anatomy and in his Latin drama Burton ruminated
more doubtfully on the relationship between scholarship and politics, and
on the uneasy association between the scholar and the monarch as patron.
Burton’s preoccupation was nothing new: the opening declaration of
Juvenal’s seventh satire – ‘Et spes et ratio studiorum in Caesare tantum’
(‘Caesar alone is both the hope and purpose of studies’) – shows that
this particular relationship had already preoccupied satirists for over a
millennium and a half.4 However, Burton offers the fullest discussion yet,
and cites Juvenal’s line, significantly, in the section of the Anatomy that
discusses one of the primary ‘causes’ of melancholy, ‘Love of Learning,
or overmuch study’, where Burton seems to incorporate Juvenal’s words
into panegyric for James:
Et spes, et ratio studiorum in Caesare tantum: as he said of old, we may
truly say now, he [James] is our Amulet, our Sunne, our sole comfort and
refuge, our Ptolomy, our common Maecenas, Jacobus munificus [munifi-
cent James], Jacobus pacificus [James the peace-maker], mysta Musarum
[priest of the Muses], Rex Platonicus: Grande decus, columenque nostrum
[lofty ornament and our pillar]: A famous Scholler himselfe, and the sole
Patron, Pillar, and sustainer of Learning (I, 320).
Yet a reading of this passage as uncomplicated panegyric jars with Burton’s

explorations elsewhere of how the pursuit of royal favour can affect schol-
arship; his citation of Juvenal, particularly, needs to be considered against
his meditations on what happens to an academic institution when all of its
scholars are bent on winning such favour. Although the king is equated
with Maecenas, the first-century patron of Virgil and Horace, the other
terms in this list of associations – ‘Sunne’, for example, as a familiar
metaphor for royal dominance – posit James as an Augustus rather than a
mere Maecenas, as a ruler whose ideology can govern literary production
rather than merely as a rich benefactor who sponsors authors. By referring
to the title of Wake’s ardently pro-monarchical panegyric, Rex Platonicus,
Burton implies that the King controlled the narratives of his own progress
3
See W.B. Patterson, King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Jane Rickard, Authorship and Authority:
the Writings of James VI and I (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007).
4
See A. Persi Flacci et D. Iuni Iuvenalis Saturae, ed. by W.V. Clausen (Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1959), Satvra VII. 1, p. 96.
Robert Burton and Patronage 177
movements (as at the Bodleian) and communicated his own terms for self-
presentation as a philosopher-king. Although Burton’s anecdote of the
Bodleian visit might seem like fond reminiscence, a closer investigation
both of Burton’s experience of James at Oxford and of his representation
of patronage in his subsequent writing reveals attitudes that are far from
simple.
Burton contributed to two plays at Oxford during the first two decades
of the seventeenth century which are less well-known than the Anatomy,
but significantly advance our understanding of Burton’s representations
of learning. The reception of the first play, Alba, demonstrates how the
scholar could fail to impress royalty, and the second, Philosophaster,
offers savage satire on how the desire for monetary gain through patro-
nage could cripple an authentic desire for wisdom. Alba was written for
performance during James’s 1605 visit to Oxford; it is not extant, but we
can reconstruct plot details from contemporary accounts and dramatur-
gical sources. Philosophaster (‘False philosopher’) does exist, and was
staged in 1618, although it was probably written a decade earlier. Both
plays were performed in Christ Church hall, central site of Oxford drama
during the reigns of Elizabeth and James.5 The monarch and his role as
a patron of scholars looms large not only over the production of Burton’s
1605 play but also over the content of Philosophaster, which is marked by
speculation on the proper function of the scholar.
It is my suggestion that Burton’s thinking on this subject was prompted
in part by his own first-hand experience as a participant in the 1605 visit.
Burton was involved in literary endeavours of a sort that might have led
– and did lead, for others – to royal favour. Progress visits to the univer-
sities often resulted in favour for the more prominent scholars: a speech
delivered by Tobie Matthew, then an MA student at Christ Church, for
example, so impressed Elizabeth I during her 1566 visit to Oxford that she
made Matthew her chaplain-in-ordinary.6 We do not know whether Burton
became involved in the 1605 visit because this was required of him as
someone who had recently proceeded to the MA degree (in early June) or
5
John R. Elliott, ‘The Universities: Early Staging in Oxford’, in A New History of
Early English Drama, ed. by John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1997), pp. 68-76.
6
See the author’s edition of the contemporary accounts of Elizabeth’s 1566 visit to
Oxford, in John Nichols’s The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth I:
A New Edition of the Early Modern Sources, 5 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
forthcoming 2013), I.
178 Sarah Knight
whether he was eager for praise and preferment, but we can fairly assume
that personal ambition, in some form, spurred his involvement. Burton’s
participation was concerted. As well as writing and attending rehearsals
for Alba, Burton also contributed a poem to the Christ Church anthology
written to commemorate the visit, Musa Hospitalis Ecclesiæ Christi.7
Several other poets in the Musa Hospitalis anthology make the connec-
tion between the King and patronage explicit, as in a poem by Edward
James, a Christ Church Master of Art, which begins ‘Regemque Patro-
numque suum centenus alumnus | Excipit’ (‘a hundred students receive
their King and patron’ (f. B3r)). Patronage and panegyric are central to
the anthology and most of its contents are as uncontroversial as Edward
James’s offering. Burton’s poem, however, although panegyric of a kind,
is far less straightforward; under the title ‘De Sole Venere & Mercurio in
virgine coniunctis quo tempore Rex Ecclesiam Christi ingressurus est’
(‘On the conjunctions of the Sun, Venus and Mercury in Virgo when the
King is about to enter Christ Church’ (f. D2r)), he connects the members
of the royal household with the planets. Based on what we know of the
king’s literary tastes at the start of his reign, the conceit is surprising.
Although we do not know how the King responded to Burton’s poem,
or for certain whether he reacted, it is likely that he read it; as a poet
himself, James would probably have been sensitive to nuances of meaning
in the poetry of others, 8 and we know that he was hypersensitive when his
own actions were mapped onto the heavens, as Keith Thomas has noted.9
James, highly suspicious of judicial astrology, had gone as far as to call
it ‘the Divels schoole’ in Daemonologie (1597).10 Burton’s conceit, then,
might be called ill-chosen, particularly compared with how carefully his
7
Musa Hospitalis Ecclesiæ Christi Oxoniensis. In adventum Fœlicissimum Serenis-
simum Jacobi Regis, Annæ Reginæ, & Henrici Principis ad eandem Ecclesiam (Oxford:
Joseph Barnes, 1605). See Kiessling, Library of Robert Burton, pp. 223-24 (nos 1181 and
1182).
8
On occasion, James misjudged the central conceit in his own verse: as Peter C.
Herman has recently argued, James’s 1586 poem to Elizabeth, addressing her as his
‘dearest sister’, rests uncomfortably on erotic diction that may have tactlessly evoked
Elizabeth’s anxiety about incest (a taboo subject for two reasons: Elizabeth’s mother Anne
Boleyn had been accused of incest with her brother George, and Thomas Cranmer had
argued that Henry VIII’s previous affair with Anne’s sister Mary made his marriage to
Anne incestuous too). In any case, Elizabeth uncharacteristically never replied to James’s
poem. See Peter C. Herman, ‘Authorship and the Royal “I”: King James VI/I and the
Politics of Monarchic Verse’, Renaissance Quarterly, 54 (2001), 1495-1530 (p. 1504).
9
Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1997), pp. 343-44.
10
James VI and I, Daemonologie in Forme of a Dialogue, Diuided into Three Bookes
(Edinburgh: Robert Waldegrave, 1597), p. 10.
contemporaries accommodated the king’s prejudice, satirising characters

who subscribe to astrological beliefs. In the Latin comedy Ignoramus, for
instance, performed during James’s 1615 visit to Cambridge, the epony-
mous common lawyer attributes his circuitous behaviour to his star sign
of Cancer,11 and other plays such as Thomas Tomkis’s Cambridge comedy
Albumazar (also performed for James in 1615) similarly mock astrology
and the occult – and, incidentally, tobacco-smoking, another one of
James’s dislikes – expressly to accord with the monarch’s tastes. Not so
Burton’s poem, and although he owned two copies of Musa Hospitalis, he
does not refer to his own contribution to the anthology when he discusses
the 1605 visit. Never shy of using anecdotes from his own life to animate
the Anatomy, Burton’s omission is striking, and extends, as we shall see,
to his other involvement in the 1605 visit, in the play Alba.
If the poem’s conceit was unfortunate, but perhaps buried among others
in the anthology, Alba was a disaster. One particularly poignant aspect of
its failure is that clearly some effort had been made to appeal to the king’s
tastes: the title, derived from Latin, Celtic and Gaelic terms, referring
to Scotland and later to Great Britain, and etymologically related to the
more familiar ‘Albion’, suggests that the play was set in the British Isles
and expressly intended to invoke the new king’s geographical provenance,
as was fashionable early in James’s reign. Macbeth (1606)12 is perhaps
the most famous instance, and other dramatists during the 1605 visit had
also played on this ‘Britishness’ of James: Matthew Gwinne’s tableau
of welcome, Tres Sibyllae, performed at St John’s College on the king’s
entrance, which has been associated with Macbeth in its focus on the
king’s genealogy,13 welcomes James with the resonant ‘To you whom one
Britain, previously divided, worships, greetings’ (‘Quem, diuisa prius,
colit vna Britannia, salue’).14 The inclusion of morris dancers in Alba,
moreover, associated then as now with indigenous traditions of entertain-
11
Ruggle, Ignoramus, III.xiii: ‘I think I was born under the signe of the Cancer, every
thing do go so crosse and backward’ (trans. ‘R.C.’ [Robert Codrington] (London: W.
Gilbertson, 1662), f. M2v); cf. Ruggle (London: Thomas Purfoot for I. S[penser], 1630), p.
105: ‘Puto erum [sic] natus sub Cancro, ita omnia mea eunt in retrorsum’.
12
See Arthur F. Kinney, ‘Scottish History, the Union of the Crowns, and the Issue of
Right Rule: The Case of Shakespeare’s Macbeth’, in Renaissance Culture in Context, ed.
by Jean R. Brink and William F. Gentrup (Aldershot: Scolar, 1993), pp. 18-53.
13
See, for example, Robin Headlam Wells, Shakespeare on Masculinity (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 125-26.
14
Records of Early English Drama (hereafter REED): Oxford, ed. by John R. Elliott
and Alan H. Nelson (University); Alexandra F. Johnston and Diana Wyatt (City), 2 vols
(The British Library and University of Toronto Press, 2004), I, 315: added to Gwinne,
Vertumnus, f. H3r.
180 Sarah Knight
ment, also suggests that the play was intended to fit within a theatrical
programme, however hazily delineated, intended to appeal to the new
king. Yet this effort to appeal failed. Sir Thomas Bodley gave a lukewarm
précis (‘Their tragedie and Comedies were very clerkly penned, but not
so well acted, and somwhat ouer tedious’15), while the play was lacerated
by the Cambridge Fellow Philip Stringer:
The Comedie began between 9. and 10., and ended at one, the name of yt
was Alba, whereof I never saw reason, it was a pastorall much like one
which I have seene in Kinges Colledg in Cambridge, but acted farr worse,
in the actinge thereof they brought in 5. or 6. men almost naked which were
much disliked by the Queene and Ladyes, and alsoe manye rusticall songes
and daunces, which made it seeme verye tedious in soe much that if the
Chauncelors of both the Vniversityes had not intreated his Maiestie earnest-
lye, he would have bene gone before half the Comedie had bene ended.16
A badly acted, tediously danced, derivative pastoral that outraged the

queen and made the king long to leave: the Cambridge man Stringer might
be expected to be biased (‘much like one [...] in Cambridge, but acted farr
worse’), but even the Oxford panegyricists struggled to praise Alba. Wake
describes it as a ‘Comœdia faceta’ (witty comedy) and expresses a hope
that it will be printed – which never happened – but Wake’s account seems
oddly defensive in tone when he undermines the declaration that ‘every-
thing pleased everybody’ by excluding ‘those who did not understand or
were seeking sleep rather than wit’ (‘omnia placebant omnibus, nisi qui
aut non intelligerent, aut somnium potius quam sales appeterent’).17
Alba’s extant costumes and properties list suggests an eclectic cast of
characters: Apollo, a sea god, Nestor, ‘1. loose Heremites gowne’, ‘6. Suites
for morrice dancers all lyke with garters of bels’, and so on. One costume
refers to the part for which Burton had particular responsibility: ‘1. longe
black beard and hayre vncurled for à magitian’. In a letter to his brother
15
REED: Oxford, I, 294.
16
From the extant costume and properties list for the performance, it seems likely that
the ‘men almost naked’ were the so-called ‘sylvanes’ in the play: ‘3 suites of greene close
to the bodye for sylvanes’ are itemised in the list, and there are also some satyrs’ costumes
mentioned which were probably not particularly respectable either, as well as ‘Item one
suite of goates skinnes for Pan’: see Stringer, CUL MS Additional 34, f. 35; transcribed
in REED: Oxford, I, 298-99.
17
Wake, Rex Platonicus, p. 48; cf. Anthony Nixon, Oxfords Triumph (London: Ed.
Allde for John Hodgets, 1605), sig. B3r: ‘his Majestie, the Queene, and Prince, with the
Noblemen, had a Comedie played before them in Latine in Christ Church Hall, which
continued the space of three houres and more’.
William, written two weeks before Alba was performed, Burton wrote
happily that: ‘That parte of the Play which I made is very well liked, espe-
tially those scenes of the Magus.’18 Setting aside for a moment Burton’s
unfounded optimism, this creation of a magus figure is an early indication
of his interest in the performance of intellectual authority with which the
character type – from Marlowe’s Faustus to Shakespeare’s Prospero – was
conventionally associated. In his second play, Philosophaster, written
shortly after Alba, but not performed for another decade, due perhaps
to Alba’s lack of success, Burton develops this preoccupation further.
Burton himself never referred again to the antipathetic reception of Alba:
of the events of 1605, he describes only James’s visit to the Bodleian, and
makes no mention of his own active involvement. This silence becomes
more pointed when we consider that Burton does not seem to have been
comparably reticent about his other play. He mentions Philosophaster in
the Anatomy (I, 325, note s), but it is as though he wished to eradicate all
memory of Alba.
Philosophaster is set in the Spanish town of Osuna, which contained
a university represented as proverbially bad by Cervantes and Góngora.19
The university is beset by six ‘philosophastri’ who hatch a scheme to dupe
the townsfolk. In stark epistemological contrast, two serious scholars,
Polumathes (‘learner of everything’) and Philobiblos (‘book lover’), arrive
in search of wisdom: having travelled all over Europe, they have found
no wise men – ‘Sapientes vero nulli’ (I. 5. 358). 20 Philosophaster presents
us with a university town where self-promotion matters more than scho-
larship, and through his representation of patronage-seekers and false
expertise, Burton considers how scholars can function in a world that
prizes materialism and self-advancement over study. To this end, his six
philosophasters vividly personify pushy academic careerism. In the play’s
fourth act, for instance, Simon Acutus, a sophist, asks the lead philo-
sophaster Polypragmaticus how he might become ‘illustris’: ‘How may
I become well-known, and like you, a friend and ally to notables, rulers,
important men, and the duke himself?’ (‘Quî fiam illustris, dynastis,
18
Cited in Richard Nochimson, ‘Robert Burton’s Authorship of Alba: a lost letter
recovered’, Review of English Studies, 21 (83) (1970), 325-31 (p. 325).
19
I am grateful to Dr Alejandro Coroleu and to Dr Joaquín Pascual Barea for pointing
out this satirical connection, and to the latter in particular for directing me towards the
relevant Spanish literary sources.
20
All citations from Burton’s play are taken from Philosophaster, ed. and trans.
Connie McQuillen (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies,
1993).
182 Sarah Knight
heroibus, ipso duci | Aequè ac tu notus familiaris et socius’ (IV. 2. 1278-

79)). Polypragmaticus replies with a manifesto of how the scholar who
wants to ‘get on’ should behave, dependent on relentless – and carefully
judged – self-promotion; he argues that connections, whether nepotistic
or sycophantic, are all that the ambitious scholar needs.
That Burton was already articulating a certain cynicism towards
patronage a couple of years after the royal visit of 1605 seems clear, and
the forms of self-aggrandising scholarship that Polypragmaticus advo-
cates remind us of Burton’s efforts for James’s first visit to Oxford. First,
Burton’s involvement in Alba, a public performance before the royal
family: ‘You must go to the theatre, speak in public meetings where the
entire university, the whole region, can see you and hear you speak. Or
go before the duke himself’ (‘Agendum in Theatris, in publicis comitiis
| Perorandum, vbi te tota Academia, tota regio | Tum possit videre, tum
proloquentem audiat, | Aut coram ipso Duce’ (IV. 2. 1285-88)). Second,
the act of writing a poem dedicated to a royal patron and the Musa Hospi-
talis anthology: ‘Dedicate your book to some hero [an ironical heros in
the Latin], you’ll rise beyond belief in his praise, even if he is a silly
fop’ (‘Librumque inscribes heroi alicui, | In cuius laudem insurges supra
omnem fidem, | Licèt ille bardus sit’ (IV. 2. 1303-04)). The first line of
Burton’s poem in the Christ Church anthology had referred to the ‘Cylle-
nius heros’ (Mercury) as a cipher for Prince Henry: when choosing his
philosophaster’s words, ‘Librumque inscribes heroi alicui’, was Burton
thinking of his own poem’s opening? In any case, it does not seem likely
that Burton could describe the careful choice of subject matter to delight
a prospective patron without considering his own poem in the 1605 Christ
Church collection and the disastrous reception of Alba.
Strikingly, too, the play’s genuine scholars use the same metaphor that
James had used at the Bodleian – as a willing prisoner fastened to the
books – but Burton gives the image a very different resonance. Instead of
binding the monarch to the university, book chains fasten corpses to their
desks: Polumathes states that he has visited Oxford, ‘and its furnished
library’, but he ‘saw no living wise men there, but many dead ones, badly
held with chains’ (‘Et instructam illorum bibliotecam, tum in eâ | Mortuos
multos inueni, sed catenis malè habitos, | At viuum illic sapientem vidi
neminem’ (I. 5. 373-75)). We remember how James had expressed a wish
to be bound ‘in chains’ (‘catenis’) as a ‘captivus’ of the Bodleian Library:
in the world of Philosophaster, only the dead are chained to the library,
satirically associating scholarship with physical atrophy (Burton makes
a similar point in the Anatomy about the sedentary, unhealthy nature
of academic life). Burton lifts the conceit of chained books and dead
scholars from Giovanni Pontano’s criticism of the University of Genoa
in his dialogue Antonius (c. 1482) but redirects it at his own alma mater,
and even though the metaphor is meant at one level to be comic, at the
same time Burton’s echo of James’s speech cannot be accidental. So how
are we to read this conceit? On the one hand, Burton might be offering
a wryly pessimistic picture of the curriculum at Jacobean Oxford, but he
might also be lamenting a current state of decrepit scholarship, with no
‘viuum sapientem’, but only ‘mortuos’ – defunct scholars. It is tempting to
speculate that there’s a dig here at a king who during his reign exercised
unprecedented influence over the running of the universities; he feared
the fragmentation of uniformity there, cracked down uncompromisingly
on religious dissent and placed many of his favourites in prominent posi-
tions. Burton was by no means politically radical but his representation of
a moribund Oxford does imply – even if the implication is veiled by satire
– that he was concerned about the state of the contemporary university.
When we compare Philosophaster, a comedy, with Burton’s discussion
of contemporary scholarship in the Anatomy, we see that even the play’s
jokes point towards a concern about university education.
Burton ends the play on a tentative note. The scholars promise to
reform the damaged university, but it is clear that this improvement will
be arduous, and that it lies in some indistinct future. It is at this point
that we return to the part of the ‘Digression of the Misery of Scholars’
that incorporates the line from Juvenal’s seventh satire, ‘Et spes et ratio
studiorum in Caesare tantum’, and, again, to embed these words properly
within their context, it is worth looking at what Burton argues at a slightly
earlier stage of the ‘Digression’:
To say truth, ’tis the common fortune of most Schollers, to be servile and
poore, to complain pittifully, and lay open their wants to their respectlesse
patrons [...] which is too common in those dedicatory Epistles, for hope of
gaine, to lye, flatter, and with hyperbolicall eulogiums and commendations,
to magnifie and extoll an illiterate unworthy idiot, for his excellent virtues
(I, 309).
Burton is clear to state that he does not include James or (in revisions of
the Anatomy after the king’s death) his son and successor Charles I among
their number. In the post-1625 versions, Burton writes ‘he [James] is now
gone, the Sunne of ours set’ he writes, although ‘We have such an other
[Charles] in his roome [...] and long may he raigne & flourish amongst us’
(I, 320-21). But the praise for the Stuarts seems to be tempered by the fact
184 Sarah Knight
that, although Burton ‘may not deny but that we have a sprinkling of our
gentry, here and there one, excellently well learned’ (I, 321), he does not
mention any such model patrons by name, addressing generally but not
specifically such individuals: ‘you that are worthy Senatours, Gentlemen’
(I, 321). Quoting Book One of the Aeneid, moreover, Burton also implies
that although ‘Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto’21 (‘a few swimmers
can be seen in the massive whirlpool’ (I, 321)), none of the ‘swimmers’
listed by name are domestic: ‘those Fuggeri in Germany, Du Bartas, Du
Plessis’ (I, 321). In any case, it is clear that for Burton, exceptions to
those ‘Rich men [who] keepe these Lecturers, & fawning Parasites, like
so many dogges at their tables’ (I, 323) are few.
For his peroration Burton switches to Latin, forcing home his criti-
cism of false scholarship; if we understand composition in Latin to aim a
piece of writing towards an erudite readership (as Burton states elsewhere
in the Anatomy22), Latin is the appropriate language in which to lecture
fellow scholars and to take the ‘Digression’ into the realm of polemic.
Philosophaster represents a world where scholars must grub about for
financial reward, and it is this world that Burton invokes in the Anatomy’s
Latin attack on self-aggrandising scholarship. He makes clear the connec-
tion between drama and argument by criticising ‘Philosophasters – who
have no art – are licensed in Arts’ (‘Philosophastri licentiantur in artibus,
artem qui non habent’ (I, 325)), and then referring to his own play: ‘Not
so long ago, I strung them up in Philosophaster, a Latin comedy’ (‘Hos
non ita pridem perstrinxi, in Philosophastro Comœdiâ latinâ’ (I, 325,
note s)). These philosophasters, Burton continues, ‘fill the pulpits’ and
‘burst into the homes of the nobility’ (‘Hi sunt qui pulpita complent, in
ædes nobilium irrepunt’). The patronage relationship grants them license
to do so: in the terms of Burton’s argument, these ‘philosophastri’ are the
‘Lecturers, & fawning Parasites’ privileged over genuine scholars. When
we set Philosophaster against Burton’s discussion of the contemporary
academy in the Anatomy, it does not seem adequate to view the play as a
free-floating comedy unanchored by epistemological substance; instead,
an impulse more critical than comic animates the two works, as the author
is moved to articulate a deeper concern about university education.
21
Virgil, Aeneid Book 1, l. 118, in P. Vergili Maronis Opera, ed. by R.A.B. Mynors
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 106.
22
See my article ‘ ‘‘It was not mine intent to prostitute my Muse in English”: Academic
Publication in Early Modern England’, in Print and Power in France and England, ed. by
David Adams and Adrian Armstrong (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 39-49.
The Anatomy constantly shifts between autobiography, fiction, citation

and anecdote, and one of Burton’s central rhetorical guises is that of a
satirist. For the most part, this satirical persona wryly mocks the world’s
folly – Burton writes the book under the pseudonym ‘Democritus Junior’,
after all – but on occasion he adopts an angrier voice: ‘I did sometime
laugh and scoffe with Lucian, and Satyrically taxe with Menippus, lament
with Heraclitus, sometime againe I was petulanti splene cachinno [‘full of
spleen and impudent laughter’] and then againe, urere bilis jecur, [‘when
my liver started to burn with bile’], I was much moved to see that abuse
which I could not amend’ (I, 5). Spleen and bile are never more present in
the Anatomy than when Burton discusses the contemporary universities,
and it is at such moments that Burton is at his most Juvenalian. Oxford
is not Rome, of course, but ‘Democritus Junior’ finds enough wrong with
his contemporary academy to be as roused by it as Juvenal’s speaker had
been by the squalid and corrupt city by the Tiber. Burton spent most of
his life at Oxford, but his love for the university is complicatedly mixed
up with a lament for its less loveable aspects. One of the main sources of
the wrong, for Burton, is the fact that ‘spes et ratio studiorum’ still rest on
Caesar: the Jacobean era, with its overproduction of university graduates
and the king’s rampant favouritism, as well as the Stuart government’s
increased control over university appointments and clerical livings, posed
new challenges for scholars at the time. Just as the hopes expressed for
university reform seem nebulous at the end of Philosophaster, so in the
‘Digression’, Burton can propose no concrete alternatives to the current
situation within the university, as an ‘abuse which [he] could not amend’.
But by identifying and anatomising the problem, perhaps the hope is that
others will be able to solve it.
Both Isaac Wake and Burton compare James with Alexander, and it
is worth considering this more fully in relation to Burton’s representa-
tion of scholarship and patronage. Both writers mention that James acted
‘in imitation of Alexander’, declaring that he would rather be a scholar
than a king, and by the early seventeenth century, through widespread
reading of Plutarch’s ‘Life of Alexander’, the view that ‘of his owne
nature [Alexander] was much geue[n] to his booke, & desired to read
much’ (as translated in North’s Plutarch) was generally held.23 Both Wake
Plutarch, ‘Life of Alexander’, trans. by Sir Thomas North, The Lives of the Noble
23
Grecians and Romanes (London: Thomas Vautroullier and John Wight, 1579) p. 725.
North translates Plutarch’s ‘Ἦν δὲ καὶ φύσει φιλόλογος καὶ φιλαναγνώστης’: see Plutarque,
Vies, vol. 9, ed. and trans. Robert Flacelière and Émile Chambry (Paris: Les Belles
186 Sarah Knight
and Burton develop this idea to include the figure of Aristotle, Alexan-
der’s tutor. But while Wake praises the King for his keen understanding of
the staged academic debates by suggesting that James combines the best
of Alexander and Aristotle – ‘you would have thought he was Alexander
the Great, you would have thought he was the even greater Aristotle
speaking’ (‘Magnum putares Alexandrum, eundem loquentem majorem
crederes Aristotelem’ (p. 97)) – Burton uses the Aristotle/Alexander rela-
tionship very differently. Although he acknowledges its archetypal signi-
ficance (‘How deare to Alexander was Aristotle?’ (I, 320)), unusually for
the period he tends not to idealise the relationship, and so we have to
read any mention of Aristotle and Alexander very carefully to understand
its wider implications for Burton’s argument. We find one such instance
immediately before the description of James’s visit to the Bodleian. Here,
Burton argues that study is a significant ‘Cure’ for melancholy, whether
the discipline be ‘mathematics, theoric or practic parts’ or poetry: he
cites the Italian mathematician and philosopher Girolamo Cardano,
that ‘honorificum magis est et gloriosum hæc [i.e. mathematica] intel-
ligere, quam provinciis præesse, formosum aut ditem juvenem esse’ (‘it
is more honourable and glorious to understand mathematics than to rule
over provinces, to be beautiful, rich or young’ (II, 87)). He then cites the
‘pathetical protestation’ of another Italian scholar, Julius Caesar Scaliger,
that he had rather be the author of twelve verses in Lucan, or such an
ode in Horace, than emperor of Germany’ (II, 88). So Burton suggests
here that government, youth and riches are ephemeral, while academic
expertise both endures and cures illness. This is not his last word on the
subject – elsewhere, in the ‘Digression on the Misery of Schollers,’ he
had claimed that scholarship causes illness – but the exaltation here of
learning over temporal wealth is at least one argument that Burton intends
his reader to ponder.
Following a list of others renowned for learning rather than for
temporal power or wealth – Zeno, Chrysippus, Archimedes, Pindar –
Burton alights on Aristotle and his pupil, arguing that Aristotle’s contri-
bution to our civilisation was more important than Alexander’s, relying,
again, on Cardano to support his case:
et si famam respicias, non pauciores Aristotelis quam Alexandri me-
minerunt (as Cardan notes), Aristotle is more known than Alexander; for
Lettres, 1975), I.8.2, p. 38. I would like to thank Dr Lindsay Allen for helpful discussions
of Plutarch’s representation of Alexander.
we have a bare relation of Alexander’s deeds, but Aristotle totus vivit in

monumentis, is whole in his works: yet I stand not upon this; the delight is
it which I aim at; so great pleasure, such sweet content there is in study (II,
88).
The anecdote about James’s visit to the Bodleian falls immediately after
this assertion, and in a work as painstakingly structured as the Anatomy
we have to consider the anecdote’s placing very carefully. Burton is not
directly criticising the priorities that cause people to value monarchs (and
therefore patrons) over scholars, but he is urging the reader sceptically to
consider the relationship between the two.
Burton’s comparisons can be set against the opening section of the
Anatomy, which sets out the Anatomy’s central purpose; here, Burton
argues that the origins of melancholy are spiritual, and that its ‘chastise-
ments’ can lead to greater self-awareness and knowledge of God: ‘these
chastisements are inflicted upon us for our humiliation, [...] to make us
knowe God and our selves, to informed, & teach us wisdome’ (I, 124).
Adversity, Burton argues, pushes us towards God and more deeply into
our own minds, and ultimately ‘it may be for [our] good’ (I, 124). One of
Burton’s exempla of how suffering betters people is again of Alexander:
‘Great Alexander in the midst of all his prosperity, by a company of Para-
sites deified, & now made a God, when he saw one of his wounds bleed,
remembered that he was but a man, and remitted of his pride’ (I, 124). The
‘company of Parasites’ surrounding the monarch recalls the ‘Lecturers,
& fawning Parasites’ lamented in the ‘Digression’, and yet again, Burton
makes his reader think about how a ruler fosters sycophancy, his example
of Alexander ‘now made a God’ uncomfortably recalling the James who
spoke ‘in imitation of Alexander’ in 1605.
As one of the most intellectually engaged of Jacobean writers on the
topic of scholarship and patronage, it is not surprising that Burton was
interested in James’s policies, and that he owned at least four of the King’s
published works.24 His reading of the king’s speeches may have made him
aware of the ambivalence the ‘Rex Platonicus’ expressed towards univer-
sity scholarship elsewhere, particularly during meetings of Parliament, in
orations that were later published and to which Burton would have had
access. In a speech delivered at Whitehall in March 1607, for instance,
James seems somewhat less impressed by academia than he did during his
24
Kiessling, The Library of Robert Burton, p. 165 (nos 871-874).
188 Sarah Knight
library visit in 1605, mocking the perceived tendency of university scholars

to waste words: ‘Studied Orations and much eloquence vpon little matter
is fit for the Vniuersities, where not the Subiect which is spoken of, but the
triall of his wit that speaketh, is most commendable’.25 Eager to present
himself here as one offering ‘matter without curious forme, substance
without ceremonie, trewth in all sinceritie’, academic discourse – figured
in the cliché of pedantic, empty, prolix expression – becomes a convenient
rhetorical antithesis for the King. Inevitably, James pitched his speech at
the level of his audience: just as he had told the Oxford scholars what they
wanted to hear in 1605 – that he loved and prized learning – so he could
indulge in a moment of anti-pedantic satire at a meeting of Parliament, to
an audience who may well have viewed contemporary scholars as hope-
lessly remote from political activity. Burton may well have encountered
such sentiments as a reader of the king’s speeches, and although he never
directly criticises James in the Anatomy, and in fact calls him ‘A famous
Scholler himselfe’, the knowledge that the King maybe was not as keen to
be chained up in the Bodleian as he pretended perhaps informed Burton’s
own scepticism about a royal patron’s attitude towards scholarship. We
might regard Burton’s privileging of the academy over plutocratic or aris-
tocratic spheres of power as inevitable: the Anatomy is written ‘From my
Studie in Christ-Church Oxon’ (III, 473), after all, and Burton’s speaker
is always a scholar. But there is also a more subtle, topically resonant
debate about patronage and the king’s responsibility to the university that
runs throughout Burton’s writing.
E-mail: sk218@leicester.ac.uk
25
See ‘A Speach to both the Hovses of Parliament, delivered in the Great Chamber at
White-Hall, the last day of March 1607’, in King James VI and I: Political Writings, ed.
by Johann P. Sommerville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 159. The
speech was published in 1607 and reprinted in the 1616 Workes (see Sommerville, p. 294,
n. 819).
Veronika Coroleu Oberparleiter
Simon Rettenpacher’s Comedy Votorum discordia1
The Benedictine monk Simon Rettenpacher is today often claimed as a

literary figurehead of the Ordensdrama produced in seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century Salzburg at the old Benedictine University. Born in
1634 in Salzburg, he attended school in his hometown and then studied in
Salzburg, but also in Siena, Padua, and Rome, first law and philosophy,
then theology and Romance and Oriental languages.2 In the 1670s Retten-
pacher worked for some years as a university professor of ethics and history
at the Benedictine University of Salzburg. He was given the position of
Pater comicus, which means that he was entrusted with the leadership of
the university theatre. Today Rettenpacher is well known as the author of
some of the best Benedictine dramas in the Latin language, nine of which
are preserved in a contemporary printed version (of which a facsimile
edition with a translation came out in 2007),3 one in a manuscript copy
at Rettenpacher’s mother house, the monastery of Kremsmünster. He is
also the author of a German drama, which interestingly was staged — in a
shortened and modernised version — in 2007 at the very same monastery
1
I am very grateful to the organisers for their invitation to speak at the 2007 Sympo-
sium of the Cambridge Society for Neo-Latin Studies on ‘Neo-Latin Drama’, which
provided me not only with an excellent opportunity to draw attention to Rettenpacher,
but also with valuable suggestions made by the audience. Many thanks are due to Andrew
Laird for taking the trouble to correct (which in some cases meant to rewrite) my transla-
tions of Latin texts into English, and to my husband Alex Coroleu for kindly proofreading
both the paper and this article.
2
An overview on Rettenpacher’s life and works is given by Benno Wintersteller,
‘Rettenpachers Leben’, in Simon Rettenpacher, Oden und Epoden (lateinisch/deutsch),
ed. by Benno Wintersteller, trans. by Walter Zrenner, Wiener Neudrucke, 11 (Graz:
Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1995), pp. 291–318.
3
Simon Rettenpacher, Dramen (lateinisch/deutsch), ed. by Benno Wintersteller,
trans. by Alfons Isnenghi (†) and Walter Zrenner, Part I: Selecta Dramata / Ausgewählte
Dramen, Reprographischer Nachdruck der lateinischen Originalausgabe 1683, Repro
graphischer Nachdruck der Periochen 1672–1674, Wiener Neudrucke, 18 (Münster, etc.:
LIT, 2007). A discussion of the Selecta Dramata is to be found in Hildegard Pfanner, Das
dramatische Werk Simon Rettenpachers (Innsbruck: Sprachwissenschaftliches Seminar
der Universität Innsbruck, 1954). See also Edmund Haller, ‘Simon Rettenbacher (1634–
1706) als Dramatiker’, Heimatgaue, 8 (1927), pp. 280–9. As for the comedies Judicium
Phoebi and Votorum discordia, they have traditionally been discussed as satires rather
than theatre plays, if not ignored completely.
190 Veronika Coroleu Oberparleiter
of Kremsmünster.4 Rettenpacher’s work is voluminous and many-faceted.

He composed thousands of poems, and wrote an extensive historical opus
as well as a series of theological treatises.5 Most of his work is written
in Latin, some texts, mainly poems, in German. Owing to quarrels with
the abbot of his monastery, Rettenpacher was, so to speak, dismissed as
teacher, head of the theatre, and librarian in Kremsmünster, where he had
worked for over twenty years, and sent for almost another twenty years as
a parson in a small rural village. He died in 1706.
Shortly after he had stopped teaching in Salzburg, in 1678, Retten
pacher published a miscellany of satirical texts entitled Ludicra et Saty
rica.6 He did so under the pseudonym of Mison Erythraeus, which is an
anagram of his first name ‘Simon’ and a Greek form of his last name. The
book contains several critical writings on the ostensibly deplorable state
of scholarship and education in the author’s times. The pseudonym most
probably did not conceal the identity of the author to his contemporaries,
but was duly perceived by them as a subtle play on words. The writings
included in the book were not written in 1678 (when they were published),
but are a collection of juvenilia, as the preface tells us. To my mind, the
Ludicra et Satyrica were written in the mid to late 1650s, by the student
Rettenpacher, a young man eager to denounce shortcomings in society.
Although the criticism of the state of central European society is rather
general, the writings included in Ludicra et Satyrica are worth looking at
because they already reveal Rettenpacher’s literary talent.7
4
This staging of Rettenpacher’s Frauen-Treu Oder Wie Herzog Welff aus Bayern
durch Liebe seiner Frauen von großer Gefahr errettet worden ist took place on 1 June
2007, and was produced and broadcast by the Austrian radio ORF. The original German
text published in 1682 was presented in a shortened version, both carefully and beautifully
modernised by Heide Stockinger.
5
The best listing, although it needs some corrections and supplements, of Rettenpach-
er’s works is given by Altman Kellner, Profeßbuch des Stiftes Kremsmünster (Klagenfurt:
Carinthia, 1968); it is recommendable to use the book held by the monastery library itself,
which has hand-written notes and corrections.
6
Misonis Erythraei [i.e. Simonis Rettenpacher] Ludicra et Satyrica, Quae ad Studia
Litterarum atque Litteratos maxime spectant, Excitandis ingeniis, erudiendae Juventuti
(Salzburg: Mayr, 1678). I have discussed the pseudonym and the collection in V. Ober-
parleiter, Simon Rettenpachers Komödie Judicium Phoebi, De nostri saeculi Vatibus:
Einleitung, lateinischer Text, Übersetzung, Kommentar, MBS — Musae Benedictinae
Salisburgenses, 2 (Salzburg, Horn: Berger, 2004), pp. 12–19.
7
See Veronika Oberparleiter, ‘Rettenpachers Traum: Das “Satyricon, in Inepta huius
Saeculi studia”’, in The Role of Latin in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Gerhard Peters-
mann and V. Oberparleiter, Grazer Beiträge Supplementband, 9 (Salzburg, Horn: Berger
2005), pp. 82–97.
Simon Rettenpacher’s Comedy votorum discordia191
Among these writings are the comedies Judicium Phoebi de nostri

saeculi Vatibus and Votorum discordia. Judicium Phoebi8 is a lively
comedy in twelve scenes in which seventeenth-century poets with signifi-
cant names climb mount Parnassus. They wish to be admitted to Apollo’s
palace and to the god’s senate. This senate is formed by the judge Apollo
and classical authors such as Cicero, Horace, Sallust and Ennius. In the
last scene a senatorial meeting is held. It is a discussion on the state of the
Res publica litteraria, and it is a long passage in prose within a mainly
metrical comedy. With the senatorial meeting of that last scene, modelled
on the rules of real politics, Rettenpacher follows the tradition of ancient
Menippean Satire (think for example of the meetings in Lucian’s Council
of the Gods or Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis) and the Neo-Latin Menippean
tradition set by Justus Lipsius, who in his Somnium, Lusus in nostri aevi
Criticos (published in 1581) had classical Roman writers discuss how
their works were treated by humanists.9 Rettenpacher combines this sati-
rical motif with nearly eleven scenes brimful with comical situations, a
similar combination found in Italian comedies of the early seventeenth
century written in the vernacular. The judge and lawmaker Apollo is also
to be found in Italian literature of the time, namely in Cesare Caporali’s
Avvisi di Parnaso (1582) and Traiano Boccalini’s Ragguagli di Parnaso,
published in 1612/1613, which were enlarged and very often imitated after
the author’s death. To sum up, I would say that Judicium Phoebi makes
use of different literary traditions in order to present rather general criti-
cism. Rettenpacher takes up classical and humanist Menippean, oneiric
and comedy traditions, draws on texts written in the vernacular, and turns
out to have a flair for good effects on stage and a talent for writing in Latin
metres.10
A similar range of Latin metres can be found in Votorum discordia,
the second comedy included in Ludicra et Satyrica and the main subject
of this essay.11 Votorum discordia is a play about two brothers who have
been compelled by their father to undertake professional training, which
8
What is explained here about Judicium Phoebi is based on my 2004 edition (n. 6).
9
Veronika Oberparleiter, ‘Auf den Spuren von Justus Lipsius: das Motiv der Senats-
sitzung in satirischen Schriften Simon Rettenpachers’, Wiener Humanistische Blätter, 47
(2005), pp. 70–90.
10
The comedy is written mainly in iambic lines, yet there are also dactylic hexameters,
elegiac couplets, sapphic stanzas, phalaecians, and other aeolo-choriambic lines to be
found in the play. See the Index of metres in the above-mentioned edition, pp. 159–61.
11
In the Ludicra et Satyrica of 1678 (see n. 6 above) Votorum discordia is to be found
pp. 122–81.
unfortunately does not correspond to their wishes and talents. While the
son forced to become a poet would like to undertake a military career,
which would not least suit his name Pantolabus (‘he who tackles every-
thing’)12, the other one, whose name is Hermophilus, has in fact become
a soldier although he is craving for a poet’s life. The comedy, comprising
only 871 lines, shows in three acts that forcing children to pursue a parti-
cular career cannot lead to success: the two young men are surrounded by
cheaters and spongers and are still restless. In the third act they meet and
seriously dissuade each other from undertaking the career which each has
been allotted. This scene shows that both Pantolabus and Hermophilus
are determined to follow their calling. In the last scene they return to
their father Geruntius who does welcome Pantolabus, but only accepts
Hermophilus as his son after recognising a birthmark. When Geruntius is
told about his two sons’ wishes, he gives in very quickly and admits his
mistake. The comedy ends with a song by the chorus who address parents
and warmly recommend them to yield to their children’s nature. A brief
sketch of the plot is also given in an argumentum:
Geruntius ad diversa studia impellit filios: Hermophilus Marti, Pantolabus
Musis operam dare jussus, uterque genio renitente. Hic enim studia pertae-
sus, ubi Poeta Laureatus renuntiatus est, caedem spirat & sanguinem; ille
pacis amantior bella detestatur, & liberalibus disciplinis animum imbuit.
Pater perspecta filiorum indole errorem corrigit, ac lubens naturae cedit.
(Ludicra et Satyrica, p. 123)
(Geruntius impelled his sons to diverse studies: Hermophilus was told to
serve Mars, the god of war, Pantolabus to serve the Muses, the goddesses of
poetry; each of them was unwilling. For the latter, who is disgusted with his
studies, breathes slaughter and bloodshed as soon as he has been declared a
Poet Laureate; the other one is fonder of peace, he detests wars and imbues
his mind with the liberal arts. When the father has clearly perceived the
talents of his sons, he corrects his mistake and yields with good will to their
natural disposition.)
Votorum discordia is a typical student comedy. It is well known that

ancient Roman comedy was resurrected and imitated in the Renaissance
not only to make students practise the Latin language, but also to transmit
moral messages to students. Votorum discordia is one of those humanist
comedies in the spirit of Plautus and Terence. In several of their comedies
12
This name appears twice in Horace’s Satires, as the name of a scamp, maybe a
person’s nickname.
we find, for example, father-figures similar to Geruntius: In Plautus’s

Captivi a father seems to have lost both sons and is happy and moved
to find them again; in the fragmentary Aulularia we are presented with
a greedy father who probably changes his behaviour; in the Heauton-
timoroumenos, Terence puts two fathers on stage, one who used to be
hard on his son and is now hard on himself and another who is lenient,
only to become strict in the end; similarly we encounter a strict father
and a lenient foster-father in Terence’s Adelphoi. The father in Votorum
discordia resembles one of those ‘ancient’ fathers, perhaps slightly less
credible, since his character is less elaborate. Rettenpacher calls him
Geruntius (‘little old man’), in order to remind us that he is a type, such
as the figures with significant names in ancient Roman comedy. In fact
all the names used in Votorum discordia indicate that this comedy is
supposed to be a fabula palliata. And there are other typical characters
of Roman comedy to be found in the play: the ancient parasite has been
multiplied into a trio of spongers who try to get money out of the son who
has become a poet; they have names like Dipnophiletes (‘lover of meals’).
They are helped by two figures, Cosmophorus and Auletes, who serve the
function accorded to the average servant in Roman comedy. One of the
most common features of ancient Latin comedy is however missing: that
is ‘love affairs’, which is a striking feature of a text written for students, in
fact to be staged by and for them.
We do not know, however, if Votorum discordia was staged at the time.
The Benedictine University of Salzburg took up theatre performances in
1618, and we have a great deal of information about the plays performed
in the city — yet mostly about the big tragedies, the so called comoediae
finales, staged at the end of the school year. In fact, when talking about
the Benedictine theatre, one usually refers to those tragedies which were
long dramas for dozens if not hundreds of actors, and in their Christian
message not as rigorous as Jesuit plays.13 Yet there is much more to Bene-
dictine theatre than the big tragedies, many of which have been preserved.
We know of theatre performances at Easter, Whitsuntide, Corpus Christi,
Christmas, and other religious festivities, most of them supposedly of
13
A thorough discussion of the Salzburg Benedictine theatre is to be found in Heiner
Boberski, Das Theater der Benediktiner an der Alten Universität Salzburg (1617–1778),
Theatergeschichte Österreichs, vol. 6. 1 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie
der Wissenschaften, 1978). See also Alfons Isnenghi, ‘Das Theater an der Alten Salz-
burger Universität’, in Universität Salzburg 1622–1962–1972. Festschrift (Salzburg:
Pustet, 1972), pp. 173–92.
serious dramas, but not necessarily more than short plays; we know of
the staging of comedies at Carnival, of dramas on the arrival of distin-
guished visitors, and finally of dramas just as an exercise for the students
of rhetoric and poetics. Yet we do not know much about all these minor
plays. We have a handful of titles, but very often no more than references
to ‘a drama’ in the Acta Universitatis held in the university archive.14
Votorum discordia could have been one of those minor plays. Could it
be that Rettenpacher wrote this comedy as a student for his peers? I do
think so, not only because the play has a moderate pedagogical message,
and is appropriately decent (there are no Plautinian insults nor any love
scenes), but also because Rettenpacher himself, who rarely discusses his
own literary production in his correspondence, in an early letter refers to
a drama written and staged by him at his university college. He says so in
1657, as a law student.15 Finally, this comedy is full of allusions to students’
social life in Salzburg. When praising wine in a little drinking-song in
iambic dimeters, one of the good-for-nothing characters puts Tyrolean
wine on one level with Falernum, the famous and expensive favourite
wine of the Romans and the Roman synonym for good wine in general.16
In fact a document written in Rettenpacher’s student years tells us that in
the late 1650s — apart from ordinary Austrian wine and some wine from
the Eastern wine regions — wine from Tyrol was consumed at university
as a speciality.17 When later on in the comedy one of the servant-parasites
complains because others have stolen the wine he had been given by his
14
See Boberski, Das Theater, pp. 219–321, esp. 234–6.
15
See the letter addressed to Rettenpacher’s friend P. Petrus Platzer, Library of the
Monastery of Kremsmünster, CCn (Codex Cremifanensis novus) 1166, pp. 179-80.
16
As a synonym for ‘very good wine’ Falernum is often mentioned by Horace, the
Roman poet most followed by Rettenpacher (e.g. Horace, Odes I. 20. 10. I. 27. 11, II. 3, 1,
II. 6. 19, II. 11. 19, Epodes IV. 11. 13, Satires I. 10. 24, II. 4. 24-25), and also by Catullus,
Propertius, Tibullus, Martial, and other Roman writers, especially poets.
17
Laurenz Pröll, Ein Triennium an der Salzburger Benediktiner-Universität (1658–
1661) (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Gruppe der Gesellschaft für deutsche Erzie-
hungs- u. Schulgeschichte, 1903), p. 52. Pröll’s book includes descriptions and even
transcriptions of two manuscripts: one containing the matriculations of students at
Salzburg university, school, and the transitional courses between school and university;
the other one on important incidents, including disciplinary actions and expenses. In the
present context, Pröll’s book is of special interest. First, because it treats documents from
the 1650s, a decade which is not at all described in the first history of the university,
[Romanus Sedelmayr], published posthumously, Historia Almae et Archi-Episcopalis
Universitatis Salisburgensis Sub Cura PP. Benedictinorum (Bonndorfij: Waltpart, 1728),
in which chapter VI on 1649–1650 is followed by chapter VII on the years 1660 and 1661;
secondly, because Pröll provides otherwise unimportant details about daily life which
give us a very good insight into daily practical life at university.
parents, what springs to mind is a student who has been given provisions
by his parents rather than a grown-up man and sponger (lines 754–6).
Consequently, this young man gives his coat to someone hoping that he
will pawn it for him and, in turn, get some money for new wine. Swapping
clothes is not only a standard motive in Jesuit plays, but might allude to a
popular habit of swapping clothes among students, which led to so many
scuffles that it was officially forbidden in 1658, as the above-mentioned
document also informs us.18 Against this background one can imagine
students in the audience greatly enjoying themselves.
The same scene implies a reference to the genre which Rettenpacher
is trying to emulate: when Alithomorosophus declares that he is going
to wear the coat, the pallium, ‘Greek-style’, this of course means that
Votorum discordia is supposed to be a comedy in Greek garment, a
fabula palliata:
alithomorosophus. Depone pallium, grave est humeris onus.
auletes. Quid vero saeviente frigore induam?
alitho. Sedebis ad focum, & studebis fervide.
auletes. Obsequia defer hospiti, & vinum refer,
Ego penates interim petam meos.
alitho. Fabula, pro superos! quam lepide acta mihi est?
Jam me decebit pallium
Gestare more Graeco.
(Votorum discordia, ll 771–8)19
(Alithomorosophus: ‘Take off your coat, it is a heavy load for your
shoulders.’ Auletes: ‘But what shall I put on in the bitter cold?’ Alitho.:
‘You will sit by the fire and study fervently.’ Aul.: ‘Bring this mark of
favour to the landlord and bring back wine. Meanwhile I shall go to my
hearth and home.’ Alitho.: ‘What talk is this by the gods! How elegantly
have I managed this? Now it will suit me to wear the coat Greek-style.’)
18
The academic senate declared on 1 June 1658 ‘daß der eine Zeit her unter Studenten
allzuviel eingerissene Mißbrauch des Tausches von Hut, Mantel, Schuh und Strumpf
durch öffentliches Mandatum abgeschafft und bei großer Strafe verboten werde’. See
Pröll (n. 17), p. 43. I am grateful to Prof. Dorothea Weber who drew my attention to the
motive of swapping clothes in Jesuit plays.
19
This passage as well as the following examples from Votorum discordia are quoted
by line number. I have counted the lines in preparation of a first modern edition of the
play. In all, the comedy comprises 871 lines, including several passages written in prose
(namely those in which a speech is given or a document is read out, which is mainly the
case for the laureation scene mentioned below).
Yet, whereas in an ancient fabula palliata we would at the end of this

scene certainly know where this character is going with his lovely new
coat, here we are not told. In fact, some scenes in Votorum discordia lack
coherence, and they are at times not well combined. We are hardly ever
told where the characters are going to and it remains unclear where scenes
are set.
One might also argue that the pedagogical message is not really
profound. Although the author emphasises the moral and pedagogical
aspects of the play in the argumentum, and even though he addresses
parents directly, he does not seriously bring up proposals for the educa-
tion of young men. Yet, this comedy neither aims at discussing the good
effects of studying poetry or history nor at the need to do physical exercise
in order to be well equipped for a military career, as humanist educati-
onal treatises would do.20 Pantolabus’s career as a poet and Hermophilus’s
work as a soldier are examples employed to transmit a more basic pedago-
gical message, namely that parents should respect their children’s nature.
In fact, Renaissance humanist pedagogical theories took their origin from
studies on human nature, which led to thoughts about, for example, self-
determination, the formation of character, and personality.21 Votorum
discordia presents us with ‘case studies’, which — given that this play
was supposed to be staged by students, at university — could not be more
effective for the parents presumably sitting in the audience.
This message, and the manner in which it is transmitted, correspond to
other writings by Rettenpacher, who has at times been called an educati-
20
Humanist Educational Treatises, ed. and trans. by Craig W. Kallendorf, The I Tatti
Renaissance Library, 5 (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2002)
offers many examples of which I will chose three: (1) After discussing the liberal studies,
in his De ingenuis moribus et liberalibus adulescentiae studiis liber (written ca. 1402-3)
Pier Paolo Vergerio devotes several paragraphs (§30-54) to ‘Arms and Letters’ (§30: ‘et ad
excolendam virtutem et ad parandam gloriam maxime sunt affines, armorum videlicet ac
litterarum disciplina’) and, subsequently, §55-68 to the importance of ‘Physical Exercises
and Military Pursuits’; (2) in his De studiis et litteris liber (written in the 1420s) Leonardo
Bruni strongly recommends that poets should be read: ‘Nam de vita moribusque percom-
mode multa sapienterque ab illis dicta et naturae generationisque principia et causae
(…) in illis reperiuntur’ (§21); (3) in his De liberorum educatione (1450) Aeneas Silvius
Piccolomini mainly discusses how to teach ‘grammar’ to boys, and gives examples from
Classical poets, orators and other writers. Yet before doing so he states (§7): ‘Duo sunt in
pueris erudienda: corpus et animus. De cura corporis prius dicemus’, and devotes several
paragraphs to the importance of physical exercise.
21
Hans-Ulrich Musolff, Erziehung und Bildung in der Renaissance: von Vergerio bis
Montaigne, Beiträge zur Historischen Bildungsforschung, 20 (Cologne, Weimar, Vienna:
Böhlau, 1997).
onalist, although he never wrote a pedagogical or educational treatise.22

Yet, in many of his writings, we find criticism and advice on contempo-
rary pedagogical and educational standards.23 Two exemplary passages
illustrate Rettenpacher’s interest in pedagogy and education, which is
always combined with satirical or even comical motifs as well as refe-
rences to classical texts. The first passage is taken from the above menti-
oned comedy Judicium Phoebi and constitutes a critique of ambitious
parents and hasty studying (1190–5):
[1190] Parentes quin etiam non levem moliuntur litteris cladem, dum filios
suos malunt videri doctos, quam esse. [1191] Cruda adhuc studia, schola
stico pulvere nondum satis exercitata in forum protrudunt, ut sibi viam ad
honores et dignitates sternant. [1192] Maximam vero pereuntis Reipubli-
cae caussam esse arbitror, perversum discendi, ac docendi ordinem. [1193]
Pueri vix ab Orbilio dimissi, leviterque Prisciani praeceptis tincti, Poesin,
Rhetoricam, et caeteras, quas non capiunt, scientias adire jubentur: [1194]
nulla interim evolvendi auctores priscos cura, […] [1195] Hinc temere om-
nia confundunt, orationemque dum struere meditantur, ultima primis, pri-
ma ultimis permiscent, ut solent balbutientes.24
(Parents may even cause no little harm to scholarship, when they prefer
their children to appear erudite rather than to be so. They push raw talents,
still immature and not yet trained enough at school, out into the public
domain, just to pave for themselves the way to honour and dignity. Yet, the
main reason for the downfall of the Republic of Letters is, in my opinion,
22
Describing Rettenpacher as an educationalist goes mainly back to the first man
who undertook research on him: Tassilo Lehner, who was quick in judging, generous
in interpreting texts, and who also adapted his articles to the nationalist tendencies of
his times. Thus, his publications have to be read with great reservation. Yet, it is due to
Lehner that research on Rettenpacher started and that many of his texts were described.
In his work on Rettenpacher as a (putative) educationalist, Lehner puts together quotations
from very different texts, theatre plays as well as satires, letting the reader assume that
Rettenpacher wrote many texts with an explicit pedagogical and educational meaning,
which is simply not the case. It is also risky to take satirical criticism always literally for
true criticism, as Lehner does, since some motifs originated more from the genre than
from Rettenpacher’s (putative) educational intention: Tassilo Lehner, ‘P. Simon Retten-
bachers pädagogisch-didaktische Grundsätze: ein Beitrag zur österreichischen Erzie-
hungs- und Schulgeschichte’, Programm des k.k. Ober-Gymnasiums der Benediktiner
zu Kremsmünster, 45 (1895), 69–90. Idem, ‘P. Simon Rettenbacher, ein österreichischer
Pädagoge aus der Reformzeit des 17. Jahrhunderts’, Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für
deutsche Erziehungs- und Schulgeschichte, 8 (1898), 306–33.
23
In this respect Rettenpacher was better classified by Franz Königer, ‘Der Pädagoge
P. Simon Rettenbacher’, Erziehung und Unterricht, 1. 10, (1958), 138–42.
24
For ‘videri doctos, quam esse’ see Quintilian X. 1. 97; for ‘cruda adhuc studia […]
in forum protrudunt’ see Petronius 4. 2: ‘cruda adhuc studia in forum impellunt’; for the
idea behind the whole passage cf. Petronius 1. 2-3, a parallel to which Andrew Laird drew
my attention.
the reversed order of learning and teaching. Boys, just discharged by Orbi-
lius and somewhat imbued with the precepts of Priscian, are told to turn to
poetry and rhetoric and other disciplines they don’t understand: however,
there is no concern with reading the old authors, […] Hence they confuse
everything thoughtlessly, and while they intend to construct an oration they
mingle the last words with the first and the first with the last, just like people
who stammer.)
My second example is taken from a poem preserved in Rettenpacher’s

manuscripts. It represents a fictitious letter in twenty-one elegiac couplets,
which shows with some psychological flair, but also good-humouredly,
the desperation of a young man who would like to leave the military
service to which he has been forced by his parents after committing an
error (CCn 1166, pp. 191-193):25
1 Inspicite o faciles maestissima verba parentes,
Et quas syncero pectore mitto preces.
3 Cur ita contrahitis vultum? …
11 Labilis haec aetas, nimiumque est pervia fraudi
Saepe ruit falsis illaqueata dolis. …
17 Sic nos incautos deludit quaelibet aura,
Dum dictis nimium credula turba sumus. …
37 Ah! duram mites, ah! tandem ponite mentem,
Militia natus, dicite, liber erit.
39 Et largam praebete manum, nec parcite nummis,
Ni cupitis, nato stamina rumpat anus…
42 Nunc tuba saeva tonat, vosque valere iubet.
(Have a look, o gentle parents, at these very sad words and the request I am
sending from my sincere heart. Why do you make such a face? […] This age
is unstable, and too prone to fraud, it falls in a noose of false deceit. […] In
this way every breath of air deludes us off our guard, since we are a mob
too easily swayed by words. […] Ah! Be gentle and finally lay aside your
hard resolve, say: ‘The son will be released from military service.’ And hold
out a generous hand, don’t scrimp with your coins, unless you want an old
woman to cut the threads of your son’s life. […] now the fierce war-trumpet
sounds and tells me to say good-bye to you.)
Finally, there is one further piece of writing preserved in a manuscript

which is said to include Rettenpacher’s pedagogical and educational
25
For this manuscript collection of letters see n. 15 above.
theory. It is entitled Praestantis ac honesti viri, sub nomine Philotimi,

vita etc. and describes, as the title suggests, the life of Philotimus in three
books, each of which comprises between ten and twelve chapters.26 This
writing includes a description of an exemplary life and gives, by this,
advice on how to educate children, how to help them develop a good
character, be modest and not to get into bad company, on what a young
man should study, and on how a man should live, both privately, as a
married man, and as a soldier in times of war. Thus, Philotimus, not only
talks about pedagogy, but also andragogy (how to conduct one’s life),
society and even moral philosophy. Yet, a close look at this writing proves
it to be more than a treatise: in fact it is a Menippean composition; it
includes poems in various metres, and figures who deplore dramatically
their age or their careers just as the father Geruntius and his unhappy sons
do in Votorum discordia. One could say that the focus of Philotimus (a
work which would deserve a scholarly analysis) is on pedagogical, educa-
tional, and social advice, although the text also has dramatic and sati-
rical elements, whereas the focus of Votorum discordia is on playing with
comical types and comical exaggeration, in the course of which pedago-
gical advice is also included.
The best comic scene in Votorum discordia is to be found right in
the middle of the play and includes interesting criticism of a contempo-
rary intellectual phenomenon:27 in the fourth scene of Act II, the son who
has undertaken a career as a poet, Pantolabus, is crowned poet laureate.
This laureation surprises us, given that Pantolabus does not want or enjoy
being a poet. That is exactly where Rettenpacher’s criticism sets in: In this
comedy we are confronted with a not only bad, but even reluctant poet,
who is, however, crowned. The laureation seems to be a logical conse-
quence of having undertaken a poet’s career. In other words, Rettenpacher
tells us that in his times the crowning of a poet has become much too
frequent and has lost its elitist character. We cannot really decide who
is teasing whom in the course of the ceremony described here, which is
26
[Simon Rettenpacher,] Praestantis ac honesti viri, sub nomine Philotimi, vita
a prima iuventute, ad senectutem usque adumbrata: ubi varij mores describuntur;
arguuntur vitia, laudantur virtutes, et vera via ad immortalitatem et perennem gloriam
aperitur: Library of the Monastery of Kremsmünster, CCn (Codex Cremifanensis novus)
52e, ff. 79a–121b (43 pages, small folio format).
27
See my article ‘Eine Salzburger Dichterkrönung des 17. Jahrhunderts’, in Neulatein
an der Universität Wien: ein literarischer Streifzug, ed. by Christian Gastgeber and Elisa-
beth Klecker (Vienna: Edition Praesens, 2008), pp. 287–318, which includes an edition of
the whole scene with German translation and annotation.
modelled on the typical parts of a real laureation. Pantolabus, who has to

sit an examination, fails to give satisfactory answers yet still passes, and
in his speech on the occasion of the crowning he debates nonsense. On
the other hand, the committee (of which, tellingly, parasites form a part)
also seems to ridicule the process and puts up with Pantolabus’s absurd
statements. The crowning of a living and still active poet with laurel as
both an approval of his qualities and a legal ceremony is the invention of
Petrarch whose laureation took place in 1341.28 Parts of the process were
a detailed examination of the candidate, a speech in which the candi-
date had to debate a poetic matter, and the presentation of a diploma,
the so-called privilegium laureationis, with the bestowal of the title and
the conferring of the licence to teach. All these parts reflect the proce-
dure of graduation undertaken at late medieval universities;29 moreover
all these parts became, as everybody knows, formalities in the course of
the centuries.30 As far as Petrarch is concerned, we know for sure that he
was examined, in fact that he was given the title mostly on the basis of his
impressive examination. One hundred and forty years later, Konrad Celtis
was crowned poet laureate at Nuremberg in 1487 and recited panegyric
poems instead of being examined.31 In Votorum discordia, Pantolabus is
asked four minor questions (such as ‘whether Bacchus should better be
praised with drinking-cups or with poems’). His answers are met with
approval from the committee. Thus, Pantolabus is subsequently given the
privilegium laureationis, with the explicit licence not only to interpret
28
See the chapter ‘Fictor sui ipsius: Geschichte eines Selbstentwurfs’, in Karlheinz
Stierle, Francesco Petrarca: ein Intellektueller im Europa des 14. Jahrhunderts (Munich,
Vienna: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2003), pp. 345–474.
29
See Joseph B. Trapp, ‘Dichterkrönung’, Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 3 (1986),
columns 975–7. Idem, ‘The Poet Laureate: Rome, Renovatio and Translatio Imperii’, in
Rome in the Renaissance: The City and the Myth, ed. by P. A. Ramsey, Medieval and
Renaissance Texts and Studies, 18 (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early
Renaissance Studies, 1982), pp. 93–130 (reprinted as chapter II in: J. B. Trapp, Essays on
the Renaissance and the Classical Tradition (Aldershot: Variorum, 1990).
30
For the procedure of laureation in Southern Germany and Austria see Theodor
Verweyen, ‘Dichterkrönung: Rechts- und sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte literarischen
Lebens in Deutschland’, in Literatur und Gesellschaft im deutschen Barock, ed. by
Conrad Wiedemann, Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift, Beiheft 1 (Heidelberg:
Winter, 1979), pp. 7–29, and Joseph A. von Bradish, ‘Dichterkrönungen im Wien des
Humanismus’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 36 (1937), 367–83.
31
See Dieter Mertens, ‘Die Dichterkrönung des Konrad Celtis. Ritual und Programm’,
in Konrad Celtis und Nürnberg: Akten des interdisziplinären Symposions vom 8. und 9.
November 2002 im Caritas-Pirckheimer-Haus in Nürnberg, ed. by Franz Fuchs (Wies-
baden: Harrassowitz, 2004), pp. 31–50.
and correct all types of poetic literature but also to invent, to lie and to
flatter:
Cacobulus. Doctrina jam claret satis, laurum cape.
(492) Quod igitur felix, faustum ac fortunatum sit, Baccho Phaeboque glo-
riosum […]. Te Nobilem ac Clarissimum Dominum Dn. Pantolabum Buc-
cadapulium e nobilissima prosapia Harpagonum, dudum Musarum Sacris
initiatum, Poeseosque candidatum innocentissimum, Castalidum Sacer-
dotibus annumero, adscribo, ac Poetam Laureatum jubeo, creo, pronuntio;
[…] (494) dans tibi licentiam, ac potestatem plenissimam interpretandi, ex-
ponendi, corrigendi, emendandi Elegias, Epica, Lyrica, Satyras, nugas ac
quisquilias vatum omnium, libertatem praeterea fingendi, mentiendi, lau-
dandi, adulandi, carpendi, ubi ingenij tui studiorumque fiduciam habueris.
[…]
At tibi ne soli videare Poeta, coronam 496
Accipe, & insigni quo te veneramur honore
Utere apud plebem: sic te sciet esse, quod audis.
(Votorum discordia, 491–8)
(Cacobulus: ‘Now your erudition is very evident. Accept the laurel. Since
therefore it is felicitous, favourable and fortunate, and glorious for Bacchus
and Phoebus […] I count you, the noble and very famous lord, Lord Panto-
labus Buccadapulius from the most noble family of the Rapacious, who has
a long time ago been initiated to the sacred rites of the Muses and is a most
innocent candidate of the art of poetry, [I count you] among the priests of
the Muses, I add you to them, and I appoint, elect and pronounce you as a
poet laureate, … / giving you the license and full power to interpret, explain,
correct and emend Elegies, Epics, Lyric Poetry, Satires, Trifles and Trash of
all bards, moreover the license to feign, lie, praise, flatter and carp, where-
ver you have confidence in your talent and your studies. … / Moreover, so
that you don’t just seem to be a poet in your own eyes, / accept the crown,
and use this extraordinary honour, with which we worship you, / before the
people: that way they will know that you are what you are reputed to be.’)
Dans tibi licentiam, ac potestatem… (494–5) of course alludes to the

typical formula with which a new poet laureate was given the licence
to read, dispute, and explain as well as to compose books and poems
himself, as we can read in Petrarch’s Privilegium.32
Finally Pantolabus is asked to discuss a poetic matter and delivers his
coronation-speech, which is pure nonsense. He discusses whether poetry
32
Cf. ‘…ubicumque locorum legendi, disputandi, interpretandi veterum scripturas et
novos ex se ipso omnibus saeculis auxiliante Deo mansuros libros ac poemata componendi
liberam tenore praesentium potestatem’, from Petrarch’s Privilegium laureationis, quoted
by Stierle, ‘Fictor sui ipsius: Geschichte eines Selbstentwurfs’, p. 371.
is made of wool and linen, or of just one of these materials. To do so, he

quotes fictitious authors, such as ‘Vagabond of the Pigsty’, who in his very
voluminous ‘commentary on the delights of the pigs’ apparently deals
with this matter at great length.
Rettenpacher could not make more fun of the honourable ceremony of
the laureation, which had become so popular in the Holy Roman Empire
after Celtis’s coronation, and especially in the seventeenth century, when
many universities were entitled to crown poets. Rettenpacher’s criticism
in Votorum discordia could have been sharper; he could, for example,
have attacked a particular crowned poet. Yet this is not the target of his
comedy. He aims at warning both students and parents of the social, intel-
lectual, and pedagogical conditions of his time. He also aims at entertai-
ning students, some of whom were supposed to put this play on stage,
others to watch it. Especially in the latter Rettenpacher proves to be
original, and this makes the student play Votorum discordia very worth
reading indeed.
E-mail: veronika.coroleu@sbg.ac.at
Arthur Eyffinger
‘The Unacknowledged Legislators of Mankind’:
Greek Playwrights as Moral Guidance to
Hugo Grotius’s Social Philosophy
Allegations of the incompatibility of the legal and literary spheres, and

of the incongruous nature of lettré and lawyer are ubiquitous and of all
times. For all it seems, the inspired poet and level-headed attorney are
worlds apart, embodying the poles of heart and head, emotion and reason,
commitment and detachment. Ovid, typically, sadly recalls his failure at
the bar: ‘quidquid ... tentabam dicere, versus erat’.1 In one of Dorothy
Sayers’s mystery novels, Lord Peter Wimsey, rudely interrupted in his
study of a fourteenth-century manuscript by an untimely call from his
solicitor, and crossed by an unfeeling remark of the latter, snaps: ‘Acid
man you are. No reverence, no simple faith or anything of that kind.
Do lawyers ever go to heaven?’2 Pedantry and self-conceit are steadfast
tools of the lawyer’s trade, if Erasmus’s Laus stultitiae is to be our judge.
Reverberating through literature is the lawyer’s greed, epitomised in the
concept of the advocatus latro.3 Thus, Shakespeare hacks in the mock
trial in King Lear, ‘Then ’tis like the breath of an unfee’d lawyer’ (I. 4.
142).4 Hugo Grotius censures the barrister in an epigram: ‘He almost lives
by his brief-bag. Just one bag he loves even better – his purse.’5
This popular conception of the legal discipline and profession is
curiously at odds with the actual pedigree of the law in Western tradi-
1
In reply to his father’s criticism of his bent for ‘caelestia sacra’, poetry: ‘studium quid
inutile temptas? | Maeonides nullas ipse reliquit opes.’ See Ov. Trist. 4.10.19-26.
2
D. Sayers, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (New York: HarperCollins,
2006), p.15.
3
See, for example, The Lawyer’s Alcove: Poems by the Lawyer, for the Lawyer, and
about the Lawyer, ed. by I. R. Warren (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1900; repr. Buffalo,
NY: William S. Hein, 1990).
4
Cf. the famous lines from 2 King Henry VI, IV. 2. 75-76: ‘The first thing we’ll do,
let’s kill all the lawyers’.
5
H. Grotius, ‘Saccus litigatorius’: ‘Sacculus hic litis discordia continet arma; | Alter
causidicis gratior aera dabit’ (‘This bag contains the discordant pleadings of the lawsuit.
That other one, more welcome to the pleader, will furnish him with his fee’). See The
Poetry of Hugo Grotius: Original Poetry 1602-1603 (= De dichtwerken van Hugo
Grotius, 2e deel. Pars 3 A en B), ed. by A. Eyffinger (Assen; Maastricht: Van Gorcum,
1988), 2, Parts 3A and B, pp. 593 and 627.
204 Arthur Eyffinger
tion. Often enough, early legislations were put in verse, as Aelian records
for Crete6 or Strabo for Spain.7 Indeed, many Greek cities boasted a
poet-legislator among their founding fathers – men like Solon, Thales,
Lycurgus or Draco8 – and prided themselves on νομῳδοί, law-singers.9
Apparently, didactic, mnemonic, and aesthetic considerations co-mili-
tated in this concept. But there is more to it. Νομός – in Greek philosophy
expressive of ‘customary law’ as opposed to θέμις, ‘Divine Ordinance’
– embodied not just the notion of ‘law’, but likewise that of ‘harmony’
and ‘melody’, in short, the overall idea of discipline, as opposed to the
Dionysian element of license. Mythical bards, by their lyrics, reputedly
upheld culture in taming lion or tiger, as did Orpheus, quenching revolt
like Terpander, or banning plagues like Thales.10 To the extent that it
helped curb man’s animal side by ritual and formula, νομός closely resem-
bled the Latin carmen with its connotations of ‘prophecy’,11 ‘incantati-
on’,12 or, more pertinent to our context and recalling the Saturnine verse
of early Roman law and religion, ‘ritual formula’13 or ‘moral sentence’,
as in good old Cato’s tract, Carmen de Moribus. Apollo, while Law and
Order incarnate, also conducted the band of Muses, ‘the first educators of
man’ in Plato’s perception,14 his advice couched in the elusive formulas
and ‘riddling rhymes’ of the Pythian oracle.
Shelley’s well-known claim that ‘Poets are the unacknowledged legis-
lators of the world’15 is just another stanza in this long tradition, neatly
6
Ael. Var. Hist. 2.39.
7
Strab. Geogr. 3.1.6.
8
On Thales, see Strab. Geogr. 10.4.19: μελοποιῶν ἀνδρῶν καὶ νομοθετικῶν. On Draco,
see Suidas Lexic. s.v. On Solon, Plut. Sol. 3.3-4.
9
As in Athens, notably with respect to the Sicilian laws of Charondas. See Athenaeus,
14, 619b, with reference to Hermippus; cf. Strab. Geogr. 12.2.9 and Stob. Serm.12. On the
institute of νομῳδός, see Mart. Cap. Nupt. 9.313.
10
Plut. Mus. 42.
11
Virg. Ecl. 4.4. Cf. Plato’s considering the poet as oracle in Ion 533C-535A. Cf.
Phaidr. 244A-245A and see e.g. N. K. Chadwick, Poetry and Prophecy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1942). Connotations of the poet as vates are found from
Landino and Gentili to Huizinga and Heidegger.
12
Virg. Ecl. 8.69.
13
Cic. Mur. 12.26.
14
Plat. Nom. 654A. On Plato’s views on the prominent role of music in education see
Protag. 326B; Polit. 376C, 424-425 passim; Nom. 656C.
15
P. B. Shelley, Defence of Poetry (written 1819; published 1840), ‘Concluding
Remarks’, sub finem. Cf. his observation, earlier in this short but epochal Essay, that
‘poets are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society’, or his appraisal, that
‘a poet participates in the infinite, the eternal and the one’. In English literature similar
notions are found from Sir Philip Sidney’s Apology for Poetry (published 1595) to Carlyle.
‘The Unacknowledged Legislators of Mankind’ 205
echoing Jakob Grimm’s tenet in Von der Poesie im Recht: ‘das Recht und
Poesie miteinander aus einem Bette aufgestanden waren […] Was aber aus
einer Quelle springt, das ist sich jederzeit auch selbst verwandt’.16 Grimm
represents the school of Dichtung und Recht of the German Romantik,
exemplified by Klemenz von Brentano or Achim von Arnim. Along with
Friedrich-Karl von Savigny, Grimm initiated the comparative study of
German legal sources and traditions,17 in a way anticipating the modern
Law and Literature Movement heralded two decades ago by scholars like
Weisberg, White, or Posner.18
Yet, somehow, legal connotations in literature have more readily been
analysed and, by all appearances, welcomed than literary outpourings in
legal tracts.19 The work of Hugo Grotius is a case in point. Half a century
ago, a prominent Leiden law professor felt bound to ‘vindicate’ the ‘true’
Grotius of De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625) by making short shrift of the
scores of literary citations in the epochal work.20 This at the time widely
acclaimed procedure is the more interesting inasmuch as Grotius himself,
in the successive editions of his chef d’oeuvre, demonstrably took pains
precisely to enlarge on his (by all standards) impressive display of the
classical literary tradition. It is suggestive of a widespread misconception
of the role and purport of these citations.
This is not to say that in Grotius’s day and age any such interweaving
of disciplines was taken for granted. If no one would look askance at
Grotius’s legal imagery in his epithalamia to colleagues at the bar, in 1639
16
Jakob Grimm, ‘Von der Poesie im Recht’, Zeitschrift für geschichtliche Rechtswis-
senschaft, 2 (1815), 153-54.
17
See Jakob Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer (Göttingen: Dietrich, 1828); Frie-
drich-Karl Von Savigny, Vom Beruf unserer Zeit zur Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissen-
schaft (Heidelberg: Mohr und Zimmer, 1814) and cf., for example, in France J. P. Chassan,
Essai sur la symbolique du droit mystérieuse (Paris: Vidocq, 1847).
18
Cf. Richard Weisberg, The Failure of the Word (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1984) and Poethics and Other Strategies of Law and Literature (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1992); James Boyd White, Heracles’ Bow (Madison, WI: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1985); Richard A. Posner, Law and Literature: A Misunderstood
Relation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).
19
The recent research of the American international lawyer Theodore Meron,
judge and former president of the ICTY in The Hague and author of works like Bloody
Constraint: War & Chivalry in Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)
and Henry’s Wars and Shakespeare’s Laws (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), was antici-
pated as early as 1907 by W. L. Rushton’s Shakespeare’s Legal Maxims (Liverpool: Henry
Young, 1907).
20
Hugo Grotius, De Iure Belli ac Pacis, an extract by B. M. Telders, ed. by J. Barents
and A. J. S. Douma (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1948).
Jean Chapelain explicitly censured Grotius’s versification of Justinian’s

Institutiones, an endeavour otherwise well within the tradition of didactic
poetry from Empedocles to Lucretius and Virgil. In a letter to Guez de
Balzac the French critic commented, ‘Il luy faut pardonner la versifica-
tion des Instituts pour ce qu’il est jurisprudent et qu’il fist cette mauvaise
galanterie estant encore asses jeune’. To which De Balzac replied, ‘S’il
n’avait point mis les Institutes en vers, et debité quelques autres pièces de
mesme nature, je l’estimerois encore davantage’.21
Still, Grotius’s wealth of references to classical poetry in his legal trea-
tises is of a nature and purport altogether incapable of being dismissed
as mere embellishments. This applies eminently to his citations from
Greek classical playwrights.22 In advancing this thesis we refer to the
intriguing literary theory that came to prevail in circles of humanists ever
since the recapture, at around 1500, of Aristotle’s Poetica. Catapulted
into a world ruled by Plato’s concept of the inspired poet, as projected
in his Phaedo and Ion, of Horace’s theory of utile dulci, and Longinus’s
notions of decorum, a world still overtly steeped in the medieval concept
of the rota Vergilii and Quintilian’s rhetoric, Aristotle’s new doctrine, for
all its non liquets and invitation to blatant misinterpretation, invited a
reappraisal of all literary theory. Gifted commentators like Robortello,
Segni, Maggi and Vettori burned the midnight oil to sweat over its textual
constitution and to unravel its penetrating implications for genre doctrine,
in a line of research epitomised in Daniel Heinsius’s De Tragica Consti-
tutione (1611).23 Prompting a doctrinal contest of some fifty years (1520-
1570) between Horatians and Aristotelians, and with Castelvetro all but
securing the strictest Aristotelianism, Julius Caesar Scaliger’s authorita-
tive Poetices libri septem (1561) neatly tipped the balance back towards a
new synthesis, on which to base new orthodoxy.
Hurled upon a world in which the primacy of the epic in the great
Italian tradition of Petrarch, Tasso and Ariosto seemed all but self-
evident, Aristotle, by contrast, claimed pride of place for tragedy and,
to underpin his claim, advanced quite a few compelling arguments.
First and foremost, and running counter to the epic’s concept of loosely
21
The reference is to Instit. 2.1.1-10. See The Poetry of Hugo Grotius, Vol. 1. 2a. 2 (ed.
Meulenbroek), pp. 17-49. For the quotations, see 1. 2b. 2, pp. 16-17.
22
For the fairly restrained purposes of this paper I have left aside Grotius’s references
to Seneca and other Latin playwrights.
23
See Daniel Heinsius, On Plot in Tragedy, tr. by P. R. Sellin and J. J. McManmon, ed.
by P. R. Sellin (Northridge, CA: San Fernando Valley State College, 1971).
wrapping all sorts of rambling vicissitudes around a given hero, Aristotle

insisted on the strictest thematic unity, and the ensuing unities of time and
place. By deploying δέσις and subsequent λύσις of plot, tragedy ensured a
salutary mental καθάρσις, preferably by virtue of ἀναγνώρισις and ensuing
περιπέτεια.
However, more relevant to our present purposes is another paramount
feature of tragedy. Its reach was reserved almost exclusively to the realm
of kings and princes. In depicting the pangs and scruples of heads of
state tragedy stood at the crossroads of the private and public spheres,
mirroring the condition of man, indeed king-size, and conveying lofty
notions and moral wisdom in its display of ρήματα or the protagonists’
almost forensic altercation in στιχομυθία. Precisely these moral implica-
tions, encapsulating poetry as imitatio actionum humanarum, could not
fail to appeal to humanist-scholars, those founding fathers of the Insti-
tutio Principis who served as counsel to princes and tutors to dauphins.
Aristotle’s tract made humanists from Erasmus to Budé to Buchanan
advocate the auctoritas poetarum,24 insist on drama’s pertinence to the
realm of morals and politics, turn in earnest to the Greek literary legacy,
and gradually overcome the stumbling-block of its baffling prosody.
The process engendered a veritable host of editions, commentaries and
translations of Greek playwrights, both into Latin and the vernacular.
Not stopping here, humanist pedagogues emulated the concept and, in
the emphatically social and moral orientation of their pièces à thèse and
pièces à clé, created a poetical counterpart to the Fürstenspiegel.
While we should not entertain too many illusions regarding the staging
or social reach of these humanist plays outside the world of learning, and
while, admittedly, their dramatic shortcomings were often striking, this
is not to dismiss their intellectual relevance, as can be readily illustrated
with reference to a parallel from classical Rome. Tacitus’s Dialogus de
Oratoribus records a debate between the fascinating figure of Firmicus
Maternus, a successful rhetorician and barrister, with two colleagues of
his, Aper and Secundus, following the recitatio of Maternus’s fabula
praetexta, entitled Cato, the previous evening, which was ‘the talk of the
town’.25 Aper voices his sincere concern over the outspoken tenor of Mater-
24
A typical humanist concept, insisting on the pertinence of literary and historical
research to legal studies, introduced by Bodin among others. See Guillaume Budé, Anno-
tationes ... in quattuor et viginti Pandectarum libros (Lyon: Sebastianus Gryphius, 1551),
pp. 545-49; S. Gentilis, Parerga ad Pandectas (Frankfurt: Bassaeus, 1588), passim.
25
Tac. Dial. Orat. 2-10.
nus’s play in censuring morals at the imperial court, and suggests mitiga-
tion before publication, ‘ut emitteres Catonem non quidem meliorem, sed
tamen securiorem’.
Maternus indignantly denounces the idea, intimating that, on the
contrary, his next play, Thyestes, will cover any ground left untouched by
his Cato. Countering his friends’ puzzlement as to why he would jeopar-
dise his respectable, lucrative career at the bar for the sake of poetry,
Maternus tells them point blank that he will soon quit that narrow-
minded world (‘angustiae forensium causarum’), the more freely to voice
his socio-political tenets in his plays. ‘Cui bono, si Agamemnon diserte
loquitur?’, the ready reaction reads in to-the-point legal jargon. In reply,
Maternus reminds his colleagues that an earlier play of his caused the
fall of Nero’s notorious confidant Vatinius. Clearly, Maternus’s Cato and
Thyestes – the first by advocating an exemplary character, with a theme
drawn from national history, the other by censuring a loathsome one,
with a theme from mythology – on the mere strength of recitation and
subsequent publication made their mark on society in imperial Rome.
Maternus’s social rebuking recalls the equally pertinent themes of, say,
Buchanan’s plays on Jephthes and Baptistes, the one censuring the insti-
tutions of oblates, rash vows and celibacy, the other the offhand behea-
ding of state counsels. The contrast of Maternus’s protagonists reminds
us of Daniel Heinsius’s plays on William of Orange (the pater patriae)
and Herod.26
Having set the scene, we will now turn to Hugo Grotius, that preco-
cious genius that grew up at Leiden University, along with Heinsius,
under the literary aegis, if not dictatorship, of Joseph Justus Scaliger,
celebrated son of a famous father. Chips off the same block, Grotius and
Heinsius both grappled with literary theory and classical playwrights for
decades, yet differed in their approach almost from the start. While Hein-
sius’s Auriacus (1602) voiced Plato’s ἐνθουσιασμός and the playwright’s
idolatry of the sweet lyrics of ‘the bee’ (Sophocles), Grotius’s contem-
porary Adamus Exul (1601) bristles with moral sententiae to underscore
his advocacy of the scenicus philosophus, Euripides.27 The play’s pene-
26
D. Heinsius, Auriacus sive Libertas Saucia (Leiden: Andreas Cloucquius, 1602),
and Herodes Infanticida (Leiden: ex officina Plantiniana, 1632). On Heinsius’s tragedies,
see Daniel Heinsius: Auriacus, sive Libertas Saucia (1602), ed. by J. Bloemendal, 2 vols
(Voorthuizen: Florivallis, 1997).
27
See De Dichtwerken van Hugo Grotius: Oorspronkelijke Dichtwerken = The
Poetry of Hugo Grotius: Original Poetry, 1. 4 A/B (Sophompaneas), ed. by A. Eyffinger
trating, clashing dialogues, bespeaking of Grotius’s formidable powers in

court, would suggest that Adam himself was a barrister.28 Inevitably, in
the polemic on the ‘two Senecas’, their appraisal was likewise diametri-
cally opposed.29 While in Heinsius’s opinion literary genius was the fons
et finis of tragedy, Grotius insisted on the playwright’s paramount ethical
role in conveying civilis prudentia.30
For all intents and purposes, Grotius’s views on literature ring true
to his life-long social outlook. While as a playwright never ignoring his
social mission, as a lawyer or city pensionary he insists on the pivotal role
of literary authority.31 Consequently, his literary aspirations do not feature
as isolated elements in his oeuvre, but are integrated parts of his compre-
hensive social philosophy. Grotius was a socially engaged man, if not a
missionary. To appreciate fully his endeavours and accomplishments is to
view whatever he produced from that overarching perspective.
Grotius’s three Neo-Latin biblical plays, for all their literary charms,
which are indeed considerable, all hinge on socio-political issues. His
Adamus Exul (1601) emphatically explores the perimeters of free will and
predestination, the vexing issue that, fifteen years later, wrecked the expe-
rimental Dutch constitution, thereby cutting short the author’s own bril-
liant political career. His second play, Christus Patiens (1608), composed
on the eve of the Twelve Years’ Truce with Spain and dedicated to its
French auctor intellectualis, ardently advocates toleration, with a view to
preserving the faltering unity of the Seven Provinces.
The third play dates from a much later phase in life, looking back on
many bitter years of exile and an abortive attempt at the νόστιμον ἦμαρ.
Sophompaneas (1635), on the theme of Joseph in Egypt, reads like ‘Trial
and Retribution’. Brimming with political connotations, it reflects Groti-
(Assen; Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1992), pp. 18-32, notably pp. 31-32.
28
On this, see A. Eyffinger, ‘The Fourth Man, Stoic Tradition in Grotian Drama’, in
Grotius and the Stoa, ed. by H. W. Blom and L. C. Winkel (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum,
2004), pp. 117-56 (130-33).
29
See The Poetry of Hugo Grotius, Vol. I. 2. 4 (Sophompaneas), ed. Eyffinger, pp.
29-40.
30
His preliminaries abound with references to Aeschylus’s role at Salamis and Sopho-
cles’ expertise as city administrator, thus to underscore the beneficial link of spheres.
Again, he never gets weary recalling that emperor Augustus and Germanicus tried
their hands at tragedy. See his Poemata Collecta (Leiden: Andreas Cloucquius, 1617),
Sophompaneas (Amsterdam, 1635) and Poetry, I. 2. 4, pp. 129 and 139.
31
For Petrus Cunaeus’s appraisal of Grotius’s special position in the Netherlands in
this respect, see Petrus Cunaeus, The Hebrew Republic, ed. by P. Wyetzner with introd.
by A. Eyffinger (Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2006), pp. xxxiii and lxvi.
us’s misgivings over newly glimpsed horizons. Yet, above all, the play
epitomises the picture of the ruler as νόμος ἒμψυχος, the living law, in the
ideal tricolon of shepherd, husband and man of state. In this interpretation
of Joseph, otherwise unique within the dramatic tradition of the theme,
Grotius very deliberately falls in with Philo Judaeus’s essentially political
presentation of the patriarch in his De Josepho, βίος τοῦ πολιτικοῦ– contro-
versial as this interpretation may have been within the long Jewish tradi-
tion. Likewise, in harking back to the pre-Mosaic phase of Hebraism and
Noah’s legislation of universal rather than exclusively Hebrew purport,
Grotius, while paying tribute to Philo, that typical exponent of Alexan-
drian syncretism and Stoic outlook, also kept true to the solemn pledge
he had made to Lipsius as early as 1601, that all his works would forever
breathe the καθολικὸν καὶ οἰκουμενικόν.32
So much for Grotius’s ‘original’ plays. For decades on end he studied,
commented upon and translated Greek plays. Closest to his heart was his
exemplary edition and rendering into unparalleled Latin verse of Euri-
pides’ Phoenissae.33 As stipulated in the edition’s authoritative Introduc-
tory Note, Grotius took Phoenissae for the best play by the best classical
playwright.34 Its theme of exile would have been far from irrelevant to this
appraisal; Grotius worked on the text during his years of imprisonment
in Holland (1618-21), publishing the edition, following ten years of exile,
on the eve of his proposed return (1630). Translations of three more plays,
Euripides’ Supplices and Iphigeneia Taurica and Sophocles’ Electra, if
lost, are amply attested in his correspondence.35 Grotius’s philological
and literary genius cannot better be illustrated than by comparing his
terse Latin verse renderings with similar endeavours by other huma-
nists. Grotius was by far the best translator of Greek poetry Holland ever
produced and readily holds his own among the very best in Europe.36
We turn now to much similar accomplishments, yet drawn against a
much wider horizon. In his early years of exile in Paris (1622-26), in the
32
See H. Grotius, Briefwisseling, vol. 1 (’s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1928), p. 20, no. 25
dated 1 January 1601 to J. Lipsius.
33
Poetry, I. 2. 4, pp. 40-44.
34
See Grotius’s Prolegomena to Phoenissae (1630), dedicatory letter to the French
politician and counsel Henri de Mesmes; reprinted in Briefwisseling, vol. 4 (’s-Graven-
hage: Nijhoff, 1964), pp. 215-17, no. 1509, dated 1 June 1630.
35
Inventory of the Poetry of Hugo Grotius, ed. by A. Eyffinger (Assen: Van Gorcum,
1982), ‘Introduction’.
36
In my edition of Sophompaneas 1635 (Poetry, I. 2. 4, pp. 61-64), I have exempli
gratia compared renderings from Euripides’ Iphigeneia Aulica by Erasmus and Grotius
respectively.
very years he produced his two gems, De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625) and
De Veritate Religionis Christianae (1627),37 Grotius somehow found time
to try his hand at systematising the Greek poetic legacy. As much a Hercu-
lean task as a labour of love, it occupied him for two full decades. It issued
in three works, finished, if not all published, during his lifetime: Dicta
Poetarum (1623), Excerpta ex Tragoediis et Comoediis Graecis (1626),
and Anthologia Graeca (posthumously 1795-1822). The first work was a
critical edition, with Latin verse renderings, of Johannes Stobaeus’s fifth-
century anthology of sententiae on ethics and physics by Greek poets.
The second work, its counterpart in purport and quality, comprised Groti-
us’s personal selection of the gist of moral, political and legal sayings of
playwrights. Unknown even to most specialists today, Grotius thus raised
a fabulous monument in honour of the Greek classical tradition.
Unquestionably, in these endeavours, his primary goal was precisely
to preserve this rich tradition from being lost in the maelstrom of time.
To that extent, his work equals that of Stobaeus himself. There is nothing
surprising here. Indeed, in exile and once rid of political and administra-
tive preoccupations, Grotius, in a way, resumed his early work and orien-
tation as Scaliger’s pupil in Leiden. The latter had resulted in editions
very similar to Stobaeus’s: Martianus Capella’s fifth-century Satyricon
(1599), the title embracing both the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii
libri duo and the De septem artibus liberalibus libri singulares, and
Syntagma Arateorum (1600), both post-classical compilations of, respec-
tively, the liberal arts and seven centuries of classical astronomy from
Aratus to Avienus. Grotius’s times, to be sure, set much greater store in
these authors than our day and age. In its predilection for ‘original’ and
‘literary’ works from Antiquity, modern research all too readily disqua-
lifies the relevance of encyclopédistes, be they classical or humanist.38
The third work, the Anthologia, if still in the Planudean tradition39,
was perhaps the most impressive philological work done on the texts in
37
The one being a comprehensive overview of European legal culture, the other an
authoritative apology of Christianity, the works are counterparts in their advocacy of
justice and peace through tolerance and understanding. Both were instant classics and box
office hits into the bargain.
38
Even in the face of our current disproportionate preoccupation with digitalising
rather than analysing source-material.
39
The Anthologia Graeca was first published in 1494. This version was called the
Planudea as it was based on the collection compiled by the Byzantine monk Maximus
Planudes, a grammarian and rhetorician who flourished at Constantinople ca. 1325 AD.
Around 1606 Claudius Salmasius, while at the Heidelberg Library, discovered a copy
(Cod. Palat. 23) of an earlier and more comprehensive collection compiled around 900
the whole of the Renaissance and humanist periods, whether appraised in

terms of labour, quality of textual criticism, or literary accomplishment.
In his correspondence, Grotius often refers to the Anthologia as the third
stage of his project, insisting on its programmatic unity. Even so, vis-à-
vis the predominantly literary merits of the Anthologia, the Dicta and
Excerpta had the additional value of serving distinct pedagogical, moral
and political ends. Illustrative of this wider perspective, Grotius added
two short but ‘ideologically’ momentous tracts to his edition of Stobaeus
(by Plutarch and St Basil) on how students should interpret and appraise
classical playwrights vis-à-vis philosophical texts and Scripture respecti-
vely. This underscores Grotius’s ‘cultural agenda’, pinpoints the works at
the heart of his ambitious social programme, and indeed accounts for his,
at first glance, disproportionate investment of time in ‘mere’ philological
pursuits.
In Excerpta consistent reference is made to the edition of Stobaeus,
again to underscore the programmatic unity. However, two points of
discrepancy are noticeable. The Excerpta constitutes Grotius’s personal
selection, based on years of wheeling and dealing with the playwrights.
Secondly, in the Excerpta fragments are ordered not by playwright but
by subject-matter, under thematic headings, to suggest their application.40
Not surprisingly, the number of citations from Aeschylus, Sophocles and
Euripides contained in the Excerpta is fairly unbalanced, being in the
proportion of 1:2:6.41 This ratio, while confirming the overall shyness of
humanists to tackle the idiosyncrasies of Aeschylus’s style and prosody,
and their reserve towards the ‘antiquarian’ poet from Eleusis,42 bespeaks
Grotius’s predilection for Euripides’ sententious style and ‘political’
approach to the genre.
With Grotius’s programmatic interaction of works and disciplines and
his ultimate goals in investing so deeply in drama now both clearly in
AD by a Byzantine prelate, Konstantinos Kephalas. This authoritative copy, called the

Palatina, and on which modern editions are based, ended up in Rome in 1623 and was
never made available to Hugo Grotius. Grotius’s first renderings from the Anthologia date
back to his early youth (1603); some 60 poems were included in his edition of Stobaeus.
40
A parallel that comes to mind is a much similar anthology by a one-time close
family friend of the Grotii, Justus Lipsius’s Politica.
41
Fragments from Aeschylus cover pp. 2-57; Sophocles pp. 58-153; Euripides pp.
154-435. On the relationship of Dicta and Excerpta, see J.A. Gruys, The Early Printed
Editions (1518-1664) of Aeschylus (Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1981), pp. 146-52.
42
Cf. M. Mund-Dopchie, La Survie d’Eschyle à la Renaissance (Louvain: Peeters,
1984); see, for example, Robortello’s appraisal (at pp. 19-44, and notably pp. 24-25).
view, we may turn to address the last category of sources awaiting inter-
pretation, to wit, the numerous citations from playwrights in Grotius’s
non-literary and, notably, legal works. Grotius’s ‘Prolegomena’ to his De
Jure Belli ac Pacis hand us the key to the significance and hierarchy of
his multifarious sources.43 For strictly legal purposes – that is, to explain
the realms of divine and natural law – sacred writings unequivocally take
precedence in his appraisal.44 Historical references contribute in two ways:
first, by providing examples, their authority depending on their times and
provenance, with Graeco-Roman sources taking obvious precedence.45
Secondly, by providing judgments – indeed, the more pertinent where
sources agree – occasionally regarding natural law issues, yet primarily
concerning the law of nations, for which they are the primary source.
Pronouncements by poets, representing non-verifiable fiction, have no
similar legal pertinence, if adding in ornamentation what they lack in
authority. We will resume this issue later.46
Intriguingly, over time, Grotius’s successive works show a steady
increase of citations from playwrights, even to suggest a certain canon.
An initial, tentative inventory must suffice to serve our purposes. In his
first legal tract, De Jure Praedae (c. 1605), no quotations from Aeschylus
are found, five from Sophocles, six from Euripides. They concern such
issues as the precedence of natural law over positive law;47 the eternity
of divine law;48 the role of court decrees;49 the will of states being tanta-
mount to law, the inviolability of ambassadors, and burial rights;50 the
authority of (and reverence due to) the god-given king;51 the slaying of
43
DJBP 1625, Prolegomena, 46-55.
44
To perceive divine and natural law Grotius’s paramount sources are Revelation, the
Old Testament and, as an additional instrument, Hebrew authors. The New Testament,
while confirming the Old, imposes standards of a higher moral order and the superior
aspirations (but also duties) of Christianity. Morals upheld by early Christians, texts of
Church Fathers, verdicts of synods and research of scholastics added weight to this, their
accumulated authority being proportionate to their consistency. Roman law tradition, in
Grotius’s perception, covers both natural and international law, if admittedly indiscrimi-
nately, while Medieval glossators may serve to explain comparative customary traditions
and nascent positive international law.
45
Jean Bodin, Grotius holds, was the first to link the legal and historical disciplines.
46
In his Lectori to Excerpta Grotius once more discusses in full detail the value of
sacred writ and classical playwrights.
47
Soph. Antig. 454-55.
48
Soph. Antig. 456-57.
49
Eur. Heraclid. 142-43, with respect to Grotius’s Law XII.
50
Soph. Ajax 666-68; Eur. Phoen. 296.
51
Soph. Ajax 1356-57; Eurip. Phoenissae 296; 393.
public enemies;52 the use of armed force;53 the sparing of prisoners of

war;54 and finally, prize law.55
Two decades later, by 1625, the harvest has grown considerably. In the
De Jure Belli ac Pacis no fewer than 14 fragments from Sophocles are
found, 27 from Sophocles, and an impressive 77 citations from Euripides.
They concern virtually all morals in the private and public spheres, and
the laws of war and peace, as a tentative listing of major items shows:56
The Private Sphere

Asylum: Soph. Oed. Col. 462, 512, 558-68,
904-09; Eur. Heraclid. 330-32.
Burial rights: Soph. Ajax 1110-14, 1346-49, Antig.
passim; Eur. Alcest. 365-72 et
passim, Hyps. 393, Suppl. 373-80,
523-42, 563.
Exile: Eur. Heracl. 181-202.
Justice: Eur. Erechn. 44, Hel. 905-24, Phoen.
68.
Marriage, polygamy: Aesch. Suppl. ; Eur. Alcest. 305,
Androm. 170-80, 214-22.
Oaths: Aesch. Agam. 1070, Suppl. 124;
Oed. Col. 645-51; Eur. Hippol. 612.
Parents, rights over children: Aesch. Exc. 34; Eur. Androm.
987.
Punishment: Eur. Iphig. Aul. 375, Orest. 491-506.
Voting rights: Aesch. Fur., Eur. Electr. 1267-69,
Iphig, 1470.
52
Eur. Ion 1334.
53
Eur. Suppl. 347.
54
Grotius observes: ‘Unde et apud Euripidem Eurystheus negat puras fore eius manus,
qui ipsi non parceret, cui belli fortuna pepercisset.’ The reference made in this context
(De Jure Praedae, ch. viii, fol. 49) to Eur. Heraclid. 1009 seems spurious, but was never
identified by commentators.
55
Eur. Rhes. 181-83.
56
Reference is sometimes made to Exc., which is Grotius’ edition of “Excerpta”.
Wills, testaments: Soph. Trach. 1157-78; Eur. Alcest.

280-325, Androm. 418.
The Public Sphere

Ambassadors: Eur. Exc. 317.
Law of Nations/Natural law: Eur. Phoen. 497-502.
Droit de bris [wreckage]: Eur. Hel. 456.
Sovereignty: Aesch. Suppl., Pers., Prom. [Exc.];
Soph. Antig.734-45;
Eur. Herc. Fur. 26-35, Ion 69-74,
578.
Laws of War
Declaration of war: Eur. Suppl. 381-94.
Fraud in war: Aesch. Prom. passim; Soph. Creus.
frgm.; Philoct. 84-96, 108-11;
Eur. Hecub. 251-55, Rhes. 510-19.
Hostilities: Soph. Oed. 139; Eur. Ion 1334, Exc.
429.
Justification, lawfulness of war: Soph. Trach. 274-80; Eur. Orest.
507-19, Exc. 390.
Moderation in war: Aesch. Pers.; Eur. Heraclid. 961-66,
Suppl. 873-80, Troad. 95-97.
Non-resistance: Aesch. Trach. Monarch.; Soph. Ajax
677; Eur. Cycl. 120, Phoen. 396.
Peace treaties: Eur. Heraclid. 804, Phoen. passim.
Prize law: Eur. Troad. 28-39.
Punitive war: Eur. Suppl. 334-58.
Unjust war: Eur. Hel., Iphig. Aul. 1384-1402.
War of assistance to allies / friends: Eur. Heraclid. 135, Suppl. 253-63.
War vs. diplomacy: Eur. Hel. 734-43, Iphig. Aul. 1014-23,
Phoen. 515-25, Suppl. 473-93.
Grotius’s procedure is similar in his other works.57 Elsewhere I have elabo-

rated on his debt to Greek playwrights in his biblical dramas.58 Again,
to corroborate Grotius’s lifelong interest, in his correspondence, next
to a single quotation from Aeschylus, we find close to 20 citations from
Sophocles and well over 30 from Euripides, on top of scores of references
to his Stobaeus and Excerpta. Among these are the all-time favourites of
Euripides and Grotius alike, such as τῶν ἀδοκήτων πόρον εὖρε θέοϛ.59
Clearly, lawyers and political scientists keen on analysing Grotius’s
social programme stand much to gain from this treasure-trove – but so do
philologists. Passages were invoked by Grotius at successive stages of his
career, with growing mastery and insight, to reveal intriguingly variant
readings and ever more accomplished Latin renderings.
We must conclude. In May 1615, the French ambassador in The Hague
consulted Grotius as how best to arrange his legal studies.60 In a famous
‘open letter’, De Studiis Instituendis, Grotius recommends his acquain-
tance first to secure a solid philosophical basis in ethics and civilis
prudentia,61 then to read the poemata moralia,62 and to complement this
with Cicero’s De Officiis, political historians like Sallust, Aristotle’s tract
on rhetoric, and the speeches of Demosthenes and Cicero. ‘Only then
you should turn to the law, and I mean not to the private sphere of those
legulei et rabulae, but to the public international domain and the laws
based on the moralis sapientia as exposed in Plato’s and Cicero’s Laws’.63
In the wake of Jean Bodin, Guillaume Budé – witness his Annotations
to the Pandects – considered a literary background paramount to legal
training. But so did the celebrated American judge, Learned Hand:
57
Thus, in his irenical tract Meletius (1611), quotations are found from Aeschylus
on the nature of God (Aesch. Frgm. Nauck 145 = Stob. 10), from Sophocles on religious
ceremony (Soph. Frgm. Nauck 753 = Stob. 26.), and from Euripides on the sanctity of
matrimony (Eur. Androm. 177), otherwise a major theme throughout Grotius’s works and
recurrent in his own three plays.
58
Notably in Sophompaneas 1635. See Poetry, I. 2. 4 and ‘The Fourth Man’, see above
n. 29, pp. 154-56.
59
The line, found in Alcest. 1162, Androm. 1287, Bacch. 1391, Hel. 1691, and Med.
1418, is found three times in Grotius’s correspondence: Briefwisseling, VIII, p. 665; X, p.
106; XI, p. 204. Various other favourite passus can be discerned, notably from Euripides’
Supplices and Phoenissae, and Sophocles’ Ajax and Antigone.
60
Briefwisseling, I, pp. 483-87, letter no. 402, dated 13 May 1615 to B. Aubéry du
Maurier.
61
In this context he suggests the Nicomachean Ethics, the schools of Academy, Stoics
and Epicureans, along with Epictetus and notably Theophrastus.
62
With specific reference to Euripides, Terence, Horace, and Seneca.
63
Briefwisseling, I, pp. 384-87, no. 402, dated 13 May 1615.
I venture to believe that it is as important to a judge called upon a question

of constitutional law, to have at least a bowing acquaintance with Acton
and Maitland, with Thucydides, Gibbon and Carlyle, with Homer, Dante,
Shakespeare and Milton, with Machiavelli, Montaigne and Rabelais, with
Plato, Bacon, Hume and Kant, as with the books which have been specifi-
cally written on the subject.64
Walter Scott reputedly held that, ‘A lawyer without history or literature

is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge
of these, he may venture to call himself an architect’. The above quota-
tion served as motto for the Festschrift offered in 1996 to the celebrated
lawyer Sir Robert Jennings, Whewell Professor of International Law at
Cambridge, upon his farewell as President of the International Court of
Justice in The Hague.65 It bespoke the career of the man who, back in
1984 (when, as editor of the series of The Poetry of Hugo Grotius, I spent
a long sojourn at Clare), over luncheons at Jesus College, first awoke my
serious interest in the law 66 – and under whom I subsequently served for
many years at the International Court of Justice.
E-mail: arthur@judicap.com
64
Billings Learned Hand (1872-1961), a famous federal judge. This is by no means
an isolated view among judges; cf. Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous saying: ‘The life of
the law has not been logic; it has been experience’. Holmes (1809-94) was a foremost poet
and Supreme Court judge. Cf. the tenet held by another Supreme Court judge, Benjamin
Cardozo (1870-1938), that, at times, a single page of history equals a volume of logic. For
an extensive discussion see Posner, Law and Literature, esp. pp. 269-316.
65
Fifty Years of the International Court of Justice: Essays in Honour of Sir Robert
Jennings, Vaughan Lowe and Malgosia Fitzmaurice (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), p. xv. Sir Robert Jennings (1913-2004) was one of the foremost modern
international lawyers. He was Whewell Professor of International Law (1955-82), and
Judge (1982-95) and President (1991-94) of the International Court of Justice.
66
An interest first aroused during my early years at the Grotius Institute in The Hague
by the inspiring guidance of Prof. Gerard Langemeijer (1903-1990), an exceptional scholar
by all standards who linked great legal acumen to intense humaneness and superb wit.
Index nominum
Abraham, M. (Saurius): 154 Bérauld, Nicolas (Beraldus): 21, 23, 35

Aelianus, Claudius: 204 Bidermann, Jacob: 154
Aeschylus: 209, 212-16 Boccalini, Traiano: 191
Agamemnon: 208 Bodin, Jean: 207, 213, 216
Alamanni, Luigi: 63 Bodley, Thomas: 180
Alexander VI (papa): 82 Bonifatius, Johannes (Juan Bonifacio):
Alexander III (the Great) of Macedon 111
(rex): 175, 185-87 Borculous, Harmannus: 154
Alighieri, Dante: 217 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne: 126n
Anne of Denmark (regina Angliae): 180 Bouchet, Jean: 21
Apollo: 204 Brakyn, Francis: 162, 173
Aquinas, Thomas: 125, 128 Brantius, Sebastianus: 142n
Aratus of Soli: 211 Bravo, Bartholomaeus (Bartolomé
Archimedes: 186 Bravo): 107-12
Ariosto, Ludovico: 206 Brentano, Klemenz von: 205
Aristoteles (Aristotle): 63, 127, 186-87, Brie, Germain de (Brixius): 34
206, 207, 216 Brumoy, Pierre: 137n
Armagnac, Georges d’ (cardinalis): Bullinger, Henry (Heinrich): 78
116n Buchanan, George: 41-42, 45, 49, 56-58,
Arnim, Achim von: 205 63, 148, 207, 208
Athenaeus of Naucratis: 204 Budé, Guillaume: 207, 216
Augustus (imperator Romanus): 176, Burton, Robert: 175-188
209 Burton, William: 181
Ausonius, Decimus Magnus: 38
Avienus, Postumius Rufius Festus: 211 Campano, Francesco: 64
Caporali, Cesare: 191
Bacon, Sir Francis: 217 Cardano, Girolamo, 186-7
Bade, Josse (Jodocus Badius): 36 Carlyle, Thomas: 205, 217
Bailey, Gauvin Alexander: 126n Castelvetro, Ludovico: 206
Bale, John: 75, 78 Catharina Alexandriensis: 86, 88-91,
Balzac, Guez de: 206 93-94
Barberini, Francesco: 64 Cato, Marcus Porcius: 162, 204
Barthélemy de Loches, Nicolas: 20 Cattani da Diacceto, Francesco: 63
Basil of Caesarea (s.): 212 Catullus, Gaius Valerius: 162, 169-72
Bembo, Pietro: 35 Cattaneo, Giovanni Maria: 35
220 index nominum
Caussin, Nicolas: 114n, 136 Dubois, François: 27

Cellot, Louis: 115n, 136 Du Bartas, Guillaume de Salluste: 184
Celtis, Konrad: 200 Du Plessis-Mornay, Philippe: 184
Cephalas, Constantinus: 212 Du Prat, Guillaume (episcopus): 116n
Cervantes, Miguel de: 181 Duym, Jacob:148
Chapelain, Jean: 206
Charles I (rex Angliae): 183 Elizabeth I (regina Angliae): 177
Charondas: 204 Empedocles: 206
Chrysippus: 186 Epictetus: 216
Cicero, Marcus Tullius: 36, 69, 119, 163, Erasmus, Desiderius: 63, 69, 70, 87,
216 203, 207, 210
Claudianus, Claudius: 38 Erythraeus, Mison (= Rettenpacher,
Clemens VII (papa): 63, 65 Simon) : 190
Clouquius, Andreas: 208, 209 Estienne, Robert : 27
Coke, Edward: 162 Euripides: 41, 44, 63, 69, 70, 208,
Colonia, Dominique de: 115n 210-17
Coornhert, Dirk Volkertszoon:146 Eurystheus: 214n
Corneille, Pierre: 139 Eusebius of Caesarea: 81
Coster, Samuel: 143
Cramoisy, Sébastien: 114n, 115n Facio, Bartolomeo: 34
Crocus, Cornelius: 144 Finé, Oronce: 23
Cunaeus, Petrus: 209 Flacius Illyricus, Matthias: 78
Foxe, John: 75-84
Dalius, Swen Bryngelson: 154
Danès, Pierre (Danesius): 23 Gellius, Aulus: 27
Dante Alighieri: 217 Gennep, Jaspar von: 154
Gentili, Alberico: 204
Dati, Agostino: 29 Germanicus, Julius Caesar: 209
Davus: 168, 169 Ghistele, Cornelis van: 144
Della Porta, Giambattista: 161, 166, Giannotti, Donato: 63
172, 173 Gibbon, Edward: 217
Della Robbia, Luca: 63 Gnapheus, Guilielmus: 96, 144
Demosthenes: 216 Godewyck, Pieter: 148
Demoustier, Adrien: 118n Góngora, Luis de: 181
Des Fosses, Jean: 39 Gregory the Great (papa): 128n
Diest, Pieter van: 154 Grimm, Jakob: 205
Donatus, Aelius: 36 Grote, Geert: 151
Draco: 204 Grotius, Hugo: 148, 203-17
index nominum 221
Gryphius, Sebastianus: 207 Juvenalis, Decius Junius: 47n, 48, 162,

Gwinne, Matthew: 179 163, 176, 185
Heidegger, Martin: 204
Heinsius, Daniel: 148, 206, 208, 209 Kant, Emmanuel: 217
Henri IV (rex Franciae): 120 Kephalas, Konstantinos: 212
Henry Stuart, Prince (princeps Valliae): Kirchmeyer, Thomas (Naogeorgus): 68,
182 70, 71, 72, 76, 154
Heraclitus: 185
Hermippus (comicus): 204 Labbé, Henri: 24
Herod (rex): 49, 58, 208 Lalamant, Jean: 68, 69, 70, 72
Hervet, Gentien: 68 La Rue, Charles de: 115n
Hogendorp, Gijsbrecht van: 148 Landino, Christoforo: 204
Homer: 217 Laurimanus, Cornelis: 144
Lawet, Robert: 148
Honerdus (Honert), Rochus van den:
Le Jay, Gabriel-François: 115n, 136
156
Leland, John: 27
Hooft, Pieter Corneliszoon: 143, 145
Leonico Tomeo, Niccolò: 63
Horatius, Quintus - Flaccus: 42, 48, 149,
Lipsius, Justus: 85, 191, 210, 212
150-51, 152, 154, 162, 169, 176, 186,
Longinus: 206
206, 216
Lonicer, Jean: 73
Huizinga, Johan: 204
Louis XIII (rex Franciae): 120, 121
Hume, David: 217
Louis XIV (rex Franciae): 120, 121, 133
Lucanus, Marcus Annaeus: 162, 163,
Ignatius de Loyola (s.): 117, 131
186
Iphis: 41, 49-52, 55-56, 60-61
Lucianus: 185
Ischyrius, Christianus:149, 150-51, 152,
Lucretius, Titus Carus: 206
154 Lycurgus: 204
James VI and I (rex Scotiae et Angliae): Macchiavelli, Niccolò: 217

41, 56n, 159, 162, 168, 173, 175-88 Macrobius: 37
James, Edward: 178 Macropedius, Georgius: 96, 98, 99, 102,
Jansenius, Gabriel:156 142, 144, 147, 148, 149, 151-53
Janszoon, Louris: 148 Maecenas, Gaius: 176
Jephtha: 41, 44, 53-56, 60-61 Maggi, Vincenzo: 206
John the Baptist: 41, 43, 49-52, 51n, Marlowe, Christopher: 181
55-56, 58-59 Marternus, Firmicus: 207, 208
Joseph (patriarch): 209, 210 Martialis, Marcus Valerius: 162-65
Junius, Hadrianus: 146 Martianus Capella: 211
222 index nominum
Mary Tudor (regina Angliae): 83 Orpheus: 204

Matthew, Tobie: 177 Ovidius, Publius - Naso: 150, 162, 203
Maurice, Prince of Orange (princeps
Auriacus): 156 Paganini, Paganino: 64
Maxentius (imperator Romanus): 88-89, Pazzi de’ Medici, Alessandro: 63, 64,
91, 93 65, 66, 67, 68, 73
Maximinus II (imperator Romanus): Pazzi de’ Medici, Giovanni: 64, 65
93-94 Pazzi de’ Medici, Guglielmo: 64
Medici, Bianca de’: 63 Persius Flaccus, Aulus: 162, 169
Medici, Giuliano de’: 63 Petau, Denis (Dionysius Petavius): 114n,
Medici, Giulio de’ (Clemens VII): 63, 115n, 136
65 Petit, Nicolas: 21
Medici, Lorenzo de’ (‘Il Magnifico’, Petrarca, Franciscus: 201, 206
dux Etruriae): 63 Petronius Arbiter, Gaius: 49, 162, 164
Melanchthon, Philippus: 63 Philip II (rex Hispaniae): 82
Menander: 169 Philo Judaeus: 210
Menippus: 185 Pindarus: 186
Mesmes, Henri de: 210 Placentius, Johannes:147
Milton, John: 217 Plantin, Christopher: 85-87
Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin): 139 Plantin, Martine: 85
Montaigne, Michel de: 41, 45, 217 Planudes, Maximus: 211
Montmoret, Humbert de: 34 Plato: 110, 204, 206, 208, 216-17
More, Thomas: 35 Plautus, Titus Maccius: 20, 95-105, 142,
Morel, Guillaume: 60 143, 144, 149, 150, 152, 161, 162,
Moretus, Balthasar: 85-94 172, 173, 193
Moretus, Caspar: 85 Plutarchus: 185-6, 204, 212
Moretus, Johannes I: 85 Pole, Reginald (cardinalis): 83
Moretus, Melchior: 85-87 Politianus, Angelus: 23, 31, 35
Morus, Thomas: 35 Pontanus, Jacobus: 146, 183
Muret, Marcus Antonius: 41n Porée, Charles: 115n
Mussato, Albertino: 142 Prudentius, Aurelius Clemens: 56
Publilius Syrus: 162, 163
Naogeorgus: vide Kirchmeyer, Thomas
Nero (imperator Romanus): 208 Quintilianus, Marcus Fabius: 36, 206
Nieuwelandt, Guiliam van: 155
Nixon, Anthony: 180n Rabelais, François: 21, 217
Noah: 210 Radcliffe, Robert: 26
Oldenbarneveldt, Johan van: 156 Raphelengius, Justus: 86
index nominum 223
Raphelengius, Franciscus, Jr: 86 Spangeberg, Cyriacus: 154

Rappolt, Laurentius: 154 Statius, Publius Papinius: 37, 162
Rataller, George: 68, 71, 72 Stefonio, Bernardino: 125n, 139n
Ravisius Textor: 19-40 Stercken: vide Ischyrius, Christianus
Rebenstock, Henricus Petrus: 154 Stobaeus, Johannes: 204, 211-12
Rettenpacher, Simon: 189-202 Strabo: 204
Reuchlin, Johannes: 142 Stricerius, Johannes: 154
Robortello, Francesco: 206, 212 Stringer, Philip: 180
Rubens, Peter Paul: 85 Strozzi, Carlo: 64
Rubens, Philip: 87 Strozzi, Filippo: 63
Rucellai, Cosimo: 63 Strozzi, Lorenzo: 63
Rucellai, Giovanni: 63 Strozzi, Luigi: 64
Rucellai, Palla: 63
Struyven, Johan: 147
Ruggle, George: 159-74, 179
Tacitus, Cornelius: 207

Sachs, Hans: 154
Talesius, Quirinus: 146
Salmon Macrin, Jean: 27
Tasso, Bernardo: 206
Sallustius, Gaius Crispus: 216
Terentius, Publius Afer: 19, 20, 36, 69,
Salmasius, Claudius: 211
95-105, 142, 143, 144, 149, 150, 152,
Savigny, Friedrich-Karl von: 205
162, 169, 193, 216
Scaliger, Josephus Justus: 208, 211
Terpander: 204
Scaliger, Julius Caesar: 186, 206
Tesauro, Emanuele: 127n
Schenkelius, Lambertus: 85-94
Thales: 204
Schonaeus, Cornelius: 95-105, 144, 146,
Thomas a Kempis: 142
148
Schoppius, Caspar: 167, 168 Theophrastus: 216
Schreckenberger, Johann: 154 Thouzat, Jacques: 23
Segni, Bernardo: 206 Thucydides: 217
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus: 37, 42, 54, Tomkis, Thomas: 179
109-10, 142, 144, 150, 209, 216 Triclinius, Demetrius: 71, 72
Shakespeare, William: 161, 164, 173, Tudor, Mary (regina Angliae): 83
179, 181, 203, 217 Turnebus, Adrianus (Turnèbe): 72
Sidney, Sir Philip: 204
Sidonius Apollinaris: 38 Udall, Nicolas: 27
Smit, Gerbrand: 156
Solon: 204 Valla, Lorenzo: 34
Sophocles: 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, Varro, Marcus Terentius: 110
72, 73, 144, 208-9, 212-16 Vautrollier, Thomas: 58
224 index nominum
Vergilius, Publius Maro (Virgil): 63, Wake, Isaac: 175-76, 180, 185
88-9, 110, 162, 176, 184n, 206 Watson, Thomas: 68
Vladeraccus, Petrus: 103 William of Orange (princeps Auriacus):
Vatinius, Publius: 208 208
Vettori, Piero (Victorius): 63, 206
Vondel, Joost van den: 143, 148 Zeno: 186
Zuren, Jan van: 146
Wael, Job van de: 155, 156
Humanistica Lovaniensia
Notes for contributors
Humanistica Lovaniensia follows the MHRA Style Book. Notes for Authors, Editors
and Writers of Theses, ed. by A. S. Maney - R. L. Smallwood, 5th edn (London: Mod-
ern Humanities Research Association, 1996), with a few exceptions as noted below.
Accepted manuscripts that do not follow these rules can be delayed in publication.
1. bibliographical references
1.1. first reference
1.1.1. references to books

The information should be given in the following order:
–– author: forename in full, if not possible his initial(s); family name as it appears on
the title page.
• sometimes it might be better to include the author’s name within the title (e.g.
texteditions).
• the names up to three authors should be given in full; for works by more than
three authors the name of only the first should be given, followed by ‘et al.’ (=
et alii).
–– comma
–– title: title of the work (including the subtitle) as it appears on the title page, in ital-
ics.
• title and subtitle should always be separated by a colon. For books in English,
capitalize the first word after the colon and of all principal words throughout
the title. For titles in other languages, follow the capitalization rules for the
language in question.
• titles of other works occurring within the title should be enclosed in single quo-
tation marks.
–– comma
–– editor, translator etc.: the names of editors etc. should be treated in the same way as
those of authors (as to forename, number); they should be preceded by the accepted
abbreviations ‘ed. by’, ‘trans. by’, ‘rev. by’, …
–– comma
–– series, edition, number of volumes:
• If a book is part of a numbered series, the series title and the number (in Arabic
numerals) should be given. Series titles should not be italicized (see example 2).
• If the edition used is other than the first, this should be stated by ‘2nd edn’, ‘3rd
rev. edn’ (see bibliographical reference above).
• If the work is in more than one volume, the number of volumes should be given
in the form ‘2 vols’, a comma separating title and number of volumes (see ex-
ample 3).
–– details of publication: place of publication, publisher’s name and date of publica-
tion are enclosed in parentheses; a colon separates the place from the publisher’s
name; a comma separates the latter from the date.
• If place or date are not given but can be ascertained, they should be enclosed in
brackets. If one of them remains uncertain, one should use ‘[s.l.]’ (= no place),
‘[s.a.]’ (= no date) or ‘[s.l.a.]’ when both are lacking.
• In giving the place of publication, either the current form of place names in the
language the article is written in, or its official form in its own country should
be used.
• The name of the publisher should be given without secondary matter such as ‘&
Co.’, ‘Ltd’, ‘S.A.’, etc. Forenames or initials should be omitted. Where a pub-
lisher’s name includes ‘and’ or ‘&’, the conjunction should be given in the form
which appears on the title page .
• A reference to a work in several volumes published over a period of years should
state the number of volumes and give inclusive dates of publication, with the
date of the volume specifically referred to in parentheses after the volume num-
ber, when it is not the first or last in the series. If a work in several volumes is
still in the process of publication, the date of the first volume should be stated,
followed by a dash; the date of the individual number being cited should be
added in parentheses after the volume number (see example 4).
–– If the reference is to a book as a whole, a point will conclude it. If further informa-
tion about volume and/or pages is requested, a comma is added, followed by the
number of the volume (in small capital roman numerals and where necessary the
year of publication in parentheses), a new comma, concluded by the exact page or
pages.
• When the volume number is given, ‘p./pp.’ should be omitted, unless the page
number(s) is (are) also in roman numerals (see example 5).
• If there is no volume number, the numerals are preceded by ‘p./pp.’, ‘col./cols’,
‘fol./fols’.
• The first and the last number of the span should always be stated (instead of
‘sqq.’ or’ ff.’)!
Examples:
(1) Mark Morford, Stoics and Neostoics: Rubens and the Circle of Lipsius
(Princeton: New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991).
(2) G. Oestreich - N. Mout, Antiker Geist und moderner Staat bei Justus Lipsius
(1547-1606): der Neustoizismus als politische Bewegung, Schriftenreihe der
Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 38
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1989).
(3) Leon Voet, The Plantin Press, 1559-1589: A Bibliography of the Works
printed and published by Christopher Plantin at Antwerp and Leiden, 6 vols
(Amsterdam: Van Hoeve, 1980-1983).
(4) Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, ed. by G. Pignatelli and others (Rome:
Instituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960- ).
(5) Marie Delcourt - Jean Hoyoux, Laevinus Torrentius: correspondance, 3 vols
(Paris: Sociéte d’ édition Les Belles Lettres, 1950-1954), III, 17-22.
1.1.2. references to articles in journals

–– author (cf. supra)
–– comma
–– title of the article, in single quotation marks; title and subtitle are separated by a
colon.
• The title of works of literature occurring within the title of an article should be
italicized or placed within quotation marks.
–– comma
–– title of journal, in italics.
• Only the main title should be given; an initial ‘The’ or ‘A’ and any subtitle
should be omitted.
• In case of several references to the same journal, an abbreviated title should be
indicated after the first full reference or in a preliminary list of abbreviations.
–– comma
–– volume number, always in arabic numerals
–– year of publication, in parentheses
–– comma
–– first and last page numbers of article cited, without ‘p./pp.’.
–– page number(s), in parentheses and preceded by ‘p./pp.’ in case of a particular
reference.
Example:
- Godelieve Tournoy-Thoen, ‘Le manuscrit de la Biblioteca de Cataluña et
l’humanisme italien à la cour de France vers 1500’, Humanistica Lovaniensia,
24 (1975), 70-101; 26 (1977), 1-81; 27 (1978), 52-85.
- Michel Oosterbosch - Gilbert Tournoy, ‘Two Unknown Autograph Letters by
Justus Lipsius (1547-1606)’, Lias, 23 (1996), 321-326 (pp. 325-326).
- Perrine Hallyn-Galand, ‘La “Praelectio in Suetonium” de Nicholas Bérauld
(1515)’, Humanistica Lovaniensia, 46 (1997), 62-93 (p. 87).
1.1.3. references to articles in books

–– author (cf. supra)
–– comma
–– title of the article, in single quotation marks (cf. supra, 1.1.2.)
–– comma
–– the word ‘in’ followed by title, editor’s name, and publication details of the book
‘as in 1.1.1.)
–– comma
–– first and last page numbers of article cited, preceded by p./pp.
–– page number(s), in parentheses and preceded by p./pp. in case of a particular refer-
ence.
Example:
- Jozef IJsewijn, ‘The Coming of Humanism to the Low Countries’, in Itinerarium
Italicum: The Profile of the Italian Renaissance in the Mirror of its European
Transformations. Dedicated to P.O. Kristeller ..., ed. H. A. Oberman - Th. A.
Brady, Jr. (Leiden: Brill, 1975), pp. 193-305 (p. 260).
1.1.4. references to theses and dissertations

The titles of unpublished theses and dissertations should be in roman type within
single quotation marks, capitalization following the conventions of the language in
question. The degree level, university and date should be in parentheses.
Example:
- Robert Ingram, ‘Historical Drama in Great Britain from 1935 to the Present’
(unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London, 1992), pp. 17-23.
1.1.5. references to manuscripts

Names of repositories and collections should be given in full when first occurring; an
abbreviated form should be used for subsequent references.
Example:
First reference: Leiden, University Library, ms. Lips. 4.
Later reference: Leiden, UL, ms. Lips. 4.
1.1.6. references to classical authors

In references to classical authors and their works the system of abbreviations adopted
in the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae … Index librorum scriptorum inscriptionum ex
quibus exempla afferuntur, 2 edn, Leipzig: Teubner, 1990) should be followed.
1.2. later references

In all further references, the shortest, intelligible form should be used. This will nor-
mally be the author’s name (without initials) followed by (the volume and) the page
reference. When more than one work of the same author is referred to, the title should
be repeated in a shortened form. Phrases as ‘loc. cit.’ and ‘op. cit.’ should not be used.
Example:
- IJsewijn, ‘The Coming of Humanism’, p. 195.
- Voet, The Plantin Press, ii, 234-139.
2. lay-out
2.1. quotations
–– Short quotations (not more than about forty words of prose or two complete lines
of verse) should be enclosed in single quotation marks and run on with the main
text. If, however, there are several such short quotations coming close together and
being compared or otherwise set out as examples, it may be appropriate to treat
them in the same way as longer quotations.
• If a short quotation is used within a sentence, the final full point should be out-
side the closing quotation mark; the initial capital may be altered to lower case.
• If two incomplete lines of verse are quoted, the line division should be marked
with a spaced upright stoke | .
• A quotation within a quotation is enclosed within double quotation marks.
• When a short quotation is followed by a reference in parentheses, the final punc-
tuation should follow the closing parenthesis.
• The final point should precede the closing quotation mark only when the quota-
tion forms a complete sentence and is separated from the preceding passage by
a punctuation mark.
Examples:
- Clusius was generous with his advice and with gifts of plants, including the still
rare and valuable tulips, a ‘thesaurum hortensem’ (‘garden treasure’), as Lipsius
called one gift in 1585.
- According to Peter Smith ‘the seven newly discovered poems by Catullus are
absolutely fabulous’.
- Michel Oosterbosch and Gilbert Tournoy inform us ‘that in the index to that
same Inventaire (p. 526) the questionable initial was resolved into “Nicolaus” ‘.
- Soames added: ‘Well, I hope you both enjoy yourselves.’
–– Long quotations (more than about forty words of prose or two complete lines of
verse) should be broken off by an increased space from the preceding and follow-
ing lines of type script. No quotation marks are needed. The quotation should also
be distinguished from the main text by using a smaller size and indenting.
• Omissions within prose quotations should be marked by […] (an ellipsis); omit-
ted lines of verse should be marked by an ellipsis at the end of the line before the
omission. An ellipsis at the beginning or the end of a quotation is not necessary.
• A reference in parentheses after a long quotation should always be placed out-
side the closing full point and without a full point of its own.
Example:
- Harvey does, however, provide several references to the Court of Arches as the
locale. For example, he writes:
If we were wearye with walking, and loth to go too farre to seeke sport, into
the Arches we might step, and heare him plead; which would bee a merrier
Comedie than ever was old Mother Bomby. As, for an instance: suppose hee
were to sollicite some cause against Martinists, were it not a jest to see him
stroke his beard thrice, and begin thus? […] O, we should have the Proctors
and Registers as busie with their Tablebooks as might bee, to gather phrases,
and all the boyes in Towne would be his clients tio follow him. (Gabriel
Harvey: His Life, Marginalia and Library, ed. by Virginia F. Stern (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 81).
2.2. footnotes
–– Footnotes should be limited to what is strictly necessary, e. g. for documentation

and for the citation of sources relevant to the text.
–– The number of footnotes can also kept down by incorporating simple references
(such as line numbers or page references to a book already cited in full) in the text,
for instance in parentheses after quotations. Adjacent references to several lines of
the same text or to several pages of the same publication can be grouped together
in the same footnote.
–– Neither should footnotes repeat information already clear from the text: if for in-
stance a bibliography is added to a book or an article, the length of the footnotes
can be reduced.
–– All footnotes should end with a full point, whether or not they form complete
sentences.
–– Wherever possible a footnote reference should be placed at the end of a sentence so
as not to interrupt the flow of the text. In this case the footnote reference number
follows the punctuation mark.
2.3. General style requirements
–– the author’s name should appear at the head of the article (first name in full, sur-
name in small capitals), followed by the title in capitals. His or her affiliation
should appear at the end of the body of the text.
–– manuscripts should be double-spaced, except footnotes and long quotations. They
should be sent one hard copy and one Macintosh compatible high-density 1.44mb
diskette using MS Word preferably.
–– titles for chapters or paragraphs in the text should be put in bold and should be
numbered in Arabic.
SUPPLEMENTA HUMANISTICA LOVANIENSIA
1. Iohannis Harmonii Marsi De rebus italicis deque triumpho Ludovici XII regis
Francorum Tragoedia, ed. by G. Tournoy, 1978. 10 €
2. Charisterium H. De Vocht 1878-1978, ed. by J. IJsewijn & J. Roegiers, 1979.
10 €
3. Judocus J. C. A. Crabeels. Odae Iscanae. Schuttersfeest te Overijse (1781), ed.
by J. IJsewijn, G. Vande Putte & R. Denayer, 1981. 10 €
4. Erasmiana Lovaniensia. Cataloog van de tentoonstelling, Universiteitsbiblio-
theek Leuven, november 1986, 1986. 30 €
5. Jozef IJsewijn, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies. Part I: History and Diffusion
of Neo-Latin Literature, 1990. 40 €
6. Petrus Bloccius, Praecepta formandis puerorum moribus perutilia. Inleiding,
Tekst en Vertaling van A. M. Coebergh-Van den Braak, 1991. 19 €
7. Pegasus Devocatus. Studia in Honorem C. Arri Nuri sive Harry C. Schnur.
Accessere selecta eiusdem opuscula inedita. Cura et opera Gilberti Tournoy et
Theodorici Sacré, 1992. 25 €
8. Vives te Leuven. Catalogus van de tentoonstelling in de Centrale Bibliotheek,
28 juni-20 augustus 1993. Ed. by G. Tournoy, J. Roegiers, C. Coppens, 1993.
45 €
9. Phineas Fletcher, Locustae vel Pietas Iesuitica. Edited With Introduction,
Translation and Commentary by Estelle Haan, 1996. 24 €
10. The Works of Engelbertus Schut Leydensis (ca. 1420-1503). Ed. by A. M. Coe-
bergh van den Braak in co-operation with Dr. E. Rummel, 1997. 24 €
11. Morus ad Craneveldium: Litterae Balduinianae novae. More to Cranevelt.
New Baudouin Letters. Ed. by Hubertus Schulte Herbrüggen, 1997. 24 €
12. Ut granum sinapis. Essays on Neo-Latin Literature in Honour of Jozef IJsewi-
jn. Ed. by Gilbert Tournoy and Dirk Sacré, 1997. 38 €
13. Lipsius en Leuven. Catalogus van de tentoonstelling in de Centrale Bibliotheek
te Leuven, 18 september-17 oktober 1997. Ed. by G. Tournoy, J. Papy, J. De
Landtsheer, 1997. 45 €
14. Jozef IJsewijn, with Dirk Sacré, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies. Part II: Lit-
erary, Linguistic, Philological and Editorial Questions, 1998. 74 €
15. Iustus Lipsius, Europae lumen et columen. Proceedings of the International
Colloquium Leuven 17-19 September 1997. Ed. by G. Tournoy, J. De Landt-
sheer, J. Papy, 1999. 49 €
16. Myricae. Essays on Neo-Latin Literature in Memory of Jozef IJsewijn. Ed. by
Dirk Sacré and Gilbert Tournoy, 2000. 50 €
17. Petrus Vladeraccus, Tobias (1598). Ed. with an introduction and commentary
by Michiel Verweij, 2001. 30 €
18. Self-Presentation and Social Identification. The Rhetoric and Pragmatics
of Letter Writing in Early Modern Times. Ed. by T. Van Houdt, J. Papy, G.
Tournoy, C. Matheeussen, 2002. 60 €
19. Tuomo Pekkanen, Carmina Viatoris, 2005. 30 €
20. Die Marias von Cornelius Aurelius. Einleitung, Textausgabe und Anmerkun-
gen von J.C. Bedaux, 2006. 30 €
21. Justus Lipsius (1547-1606).Een geleerde en zijn Europese netwerk. Ed. by J. De
Landtsheer, D. Sacré, C. Coppens, 2006. 65 €
22. Iosephus Tusiani Neo-Eboracensis, In nobis caelum. Carmina Latina. Rac-
colta, edizione e traduzione in lingua italiana con aggiunta di Prefazione e di
Indici di Emilio Bandiera, 2007. 39,5 €
23. «Cui dono lepidum novum libellum?». Dedicating Latin Works and Motets in
the Sixteenth Century. Ed. by Ignace Bossuyt, Nele Gabriëls, Dirk Sacré &
Demmy Verbeke, 2008. 50 €
24. Spanish Humanism on the Verge of the Picaresque: Juan Maldonado’s Ludus
Chartarum, Pastor Bonus and Bacchanalia. Ed. with introd., trsl., and notes by
Warren Smith & Clark Colahan, 2009 49,50 €
25. The Neo-Latin Epigram. A Learned and Witty Genre. Ed. by Susanna de Beer,
Karl A.E. Enenkel & David Rijser, 2009. 59,50 €
26. Syntagmatia. Essays on Neo-Latin Literature in Honour of Monique Mund-
Dopchie and Gilbert Tournoy. Ed. by Dirk Sacré & Jan Papy, 2009. 99 €
27. De Paus uit de Lage Landen Adrianus VI 1459-1523. Catalogus bij de tentoon-
stelling ter gelegenheid van het 550ste geboortejaar van Adriaan van Utrecht.
Ed. by Michiel Verweij, 2009. 65 €
28. Ad fines Imperii Romani anno bismillesimo Cladis Varianae. Acta Conventus
Academiae Latinitati Fovendae XII Ratisbonensis. Edidit Jan-Wilhelm Beck,
2011. 55 €
29. Aline Smeesters, Aux rives de la lumière. La poésie de la naissance chez les
auteurs néo-latins des anciens Pays-Bas entre la fin du XVe siècle et le milieu
du XVIIe siècle, 2011. 85 €
30. Scottish Latin Authors in Print up to 1700. A Short-Title List. Ed. by R.P.H.
Green, P.H. Burton, D.J. Ford & G. Tournoy, 2012. 59,50 €
31. Terentius Tunberg, De rationibus quibus homines docti artem Latine collo-
quendi et ex tempore dicendi saeculis XVI et XVII coluerunt, 2012. 44,50 €

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SUPPLEMENTA

Editors: Prof. Dr. Gilbert Tournoy (General Editor)

Editorial Correspondence: gilbert.tournoy@arts.kuleuven.be

This publication was made possible with the financial support

THE EARLY MODERN CULTURES

Edited by Philip Ford and Andrew Taylor

LEUVEN UNIVERSITY PRESS

ISBN 978 90 5867 926 0

— Philip Ford and Andrew Taylor, Introduction 7

— Olivier Pédeflous, Ravisius Textor’s School Drama and its

— Carine Ferradou, George Buchanan’s Sacred Latin

— Elia Borza, La traduction de tragédies grecques: Alessandro

— Howard B. Norland, John Foxe’s Apocalyptic Comedy,

— Jeanine De Landtsheer, Lambertus Schenckelius’s

— Michiel Verweij, The Terentius Christianus at Work:

— Joaquín Pascual Barea, School Progymnasmata and Latin

— Judi Loach, Performing in Latin in Jesuit-run Colleges in

— Jan Bloemendal, Similarities, Dissimilarities and Possible

though the influence of Aristotle’s Poetics, in particular the important

Textor’s Dialogi were published after his death in 1530. A decade or

absent in Buchanan: Ferradou shows how he provides examples of delibe-

It is precisely on the dissemination of the Greek model through translation

John Foxe’s Christus Triumphans served more explicitly polemical ends

composed during Foxe’s period of exile from Catholic England during

Where some neo-Latin drama addressed larger readerships in print,

The example of Roman comedy and the religious interests of early

deuterocanonical Book of Tobit – Verweij explores the influence of

Jesuit education saw similar advantages in the performance of neo-Latin

the short-lived apogee of neo-Latin drama in the 1680s reflecting Latin’s

Terence, Pubilius Syrus, Ovid, Lucan, Cato, Plautus, Horace, Persius

James I is a more sustained presence in Sarah Knight’s essay. In 1621,

of the Anatomy where he discusses contemporary scholarship suggests

The continuing appeal of neo-Latin drama in an academic context is

magistrates and the moral considerations of private and public spheres,

metatheatricality. Buchanan’s very different kind of drama similarly

Philip Ford and Andrew Taylor

* I thank my friends Marc-Olivier Girard, G. Hugo Tucker, Daniel Blanchard and

in Terence,3 the most popular author after Virgil, recognised as a fruitful

literature, this kind of drama strictly depends on micro-historical events.8

intend to compose a collection of them, owing to their ephemeral status.

The name of Ravisius Textor – in French, Jean Tixier de Ravisy – is not

Mignon’s Etudes sur le théâtre français et italien de la Renaissance (Paris, 1923) is a

My reference text for Textor’s Dialogi is the posthumous edition of

impietatem’, and to give a strictly educational turn to the book, in keeping

VIII.30 Robert Hornback, following Marie Axton’s conclusions, even

writings present an Asianist vision of Latin rhetoric.36 The introductory

Milia primorum ueteres habuisse dierum

Textor takes up again some famous comparisons: Ovid, Metamorphoses

The great model is Poliziano’s Sylvae, encyclopaedic praelectiones,

Antiquity as we can guess by these extracts of the Officina:51

In the first excerpt, after a brief introduction, Textor details every

Quaeque Carystaeo sit marmore durior, et quae

Ravisius Textor, Thersites, l. 28-31, transl. M. Axton, pp. 140–1.

him very much for his precious help.

masters such as Bembo,54 rejected these verba inaudita, choosing to use

On reading this analysis of Textor’s lexical endeavours, one might ask

sophisticated metres of comedies and tragedies were abandoned in Late

Very often Textor’s characters are archetypal entities deprived of indi-

Finally, I have added a last extract to show the influence of Textor’s

numerous toponyms from Antiquity with their stereotyped locations (we

Danès in a lecture commented on by O. Reverdin, Les Premiers Cours de grec au Collège

Which were nobler than the houses of Susa and Crete;

sixteenth century, in particular between Catholics and Protestants, and

— Philip Ford and Andrew Taylor, Introduction 7

ξὺν ἀνδράσιν κάλλιον ἢ κενῆς κρατεῖν. Quod possides habere praedives