Religion and Latin Drama in the Early Modern Low Countries

Jan Bloemendal

This essay explores the relationship between religion and neo-Latin drama in the Low Countries from the mid-sixteenth until the early part of the seventeenth century and argues that the central importance of Neo-Latin drama to the teaching of early modern students reveals much about contemporary attitudes towards religion and theology. To explore the relationship between plays and religious teaching more fully, I discuss representative works by both Protestant and Roman Catholic authors, shaped by different experiences in the northern and the southern parts of the Netherlands. Before moving to a more focused analysis of specific plays, which range from the 1530s to the 1610s, I define the terms ‘religion’ and ‘theology’ as used in this study and address the immediate historical and religious contexts of the period, identifying in particular how social and political changes in the region affected the writing of neo-Latin drama and the education of boys and young men.

A Historical Context

The sixteenth century witnessed tumultuous changes in the Low Countries’ urbanization, which led to a kind of nouveau riche class of merchants in the cities. Socially and intellectually ambitious for their offspring, these men wanted their children to be educated according to the latest pedagogical trends, and it was humanists who were able to provide that new education, with the result that the medieval parish and chapter schools were gradually reformed into ‘new’ city schools where programmes of humanist teaching could be efficiently carried out. The main objectives of these new institutions were that pupils should turn as soon as possible on entering the schoolroom to reading classical authors, and to practising communication in Latin, and that they should also learn Greek, albeit to a far lesser extent. These educational developments were inevitably influenced by changes in religious loyalties in the Netherlands during the same period, when the Roman Catholic Church lost its absolute power and some of its former faithful converted to reformed denominations, as was happening across contemporary Europe. The most famous of these denominations, of course, which proved to be extremely significant in the Low Countries, was that started by Martin Luther (1493-1546) in 1517, when he published his ninety-five theses and nailed them to the doorposts of the chapel in Wittenberg, but there were also several other important religious reform movements active in the region, such the Anabaptists, the Millenniarists, Johannes Hus and the Antwerp ‘House of Love’. Just as influential for the growth of regional theology and neo-Latin drama were those movements which remained firmly rooted within the Roman Catholic Church, such as the devotio moderna found throughout the northern Netherlands and parts of Germany in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the new strands of thought arising from the Counter-Reformation, devised in reaction to the Protestant reforms, in the earlier seventeenth century.[footnoteRef:1] [1: On the devotio moderna, see, e.g., R.R. Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism (Leiden: Brill, 1968); Hein Blommestijn, Charles Caspers and Rijcklof Hofman (eds.), Spirituality Renewed: Studies on Significant Representatives of the Modern Devotion (Leuven: Peeters, 2003); John Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Elias H. Füllenbach, ‘Devotio Moderna (I. Christianity)’, in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, vol. 6, cols. 716-17; Pierre Debongnie, ‘Dévotion moderne’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité (Paris: Beauchesne, 1957), vol. 3, cols. 727-47.]

Intertwined with all of these religious movements was the educational and intellectual current of humanism. The most famous humanist from the Low Countries, the theologian Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536), was one of the foremost critics of the Catholic Church and its representatives — we might think of how he mocks monks, priests and prelates in his Praise of Folly (first printed in 1511) — who wanted to change the Church but not to leave it. Erasmus also influentially linked his educational programme, as exemplified by works like the De Ratione Studii [On a System of Study; 1511] and De Pueris Instituendis [On the Upbringing of Boys; 1529] to this ideal of religious reform. Ultimately, for many of those thinkers preoccupied both with theology and education, the religious reformation movements and biblical humanism met in the motto ad fontes: ‘back to the [written] sources’ of classical civilization as well as to the ‘fount’ of Christianity, the Bible, which reformers famously argued should be readby educated people and not only by the clergy. In his Paraclesis ad lectorem pium [Preface to the devout reader; 1516], one of the prefaces to his edition and translation of the Bible, to cite just one important example, Erasmus argued for making the Bible available to all nations and to all people, including to laymen and women:[footnoteRef:2] [2: See Paraclesis ad lectorem pium, ed. by Charles Béné, in Erasmi Opera omnia, vol. 5:7, 290 (ll. 90-3). ]

Optarim vt omnes mulierculae legant euangelium, legant Paulinas epistolas. Atque vtinam haec in omnes omnium linguas essent transfusa, vt non solum a Scothis et Hybernis, sed a Turcis quoque et Saracenis legi cognoscique possint.

[I wished that all women would read the Gospel and the letters of Paul. I also wished that they would be translated into all languages of all people, so that not only the Scots and the Spaniards, but also the Turks and the Saracens could read and understand them].

Erasmus’ biblical humanism, as well as his classical textual interests, would have a marked impact on the development of neo-Latin drama in the Netherlands, as we shall see.

Following these academic and theological upheavals expanding throughout the sixteenth century in the wake of the reformation, however, in the seventeenth century, life in the Netherlands had become somewhat more settled. Out of religious, economic and political motives the Low Countries had revolted against Habsburg dominion, embodied in the Ghent-born Emperor Charles V (1500-1555) and his son Philip II (1527-1598), in the so-called ‘Dutch Revolt’ or the ‘Eighty Years’ War’ (1568-1648). The Southern provinces (which corresponded more or less to modern-day Belgium) had been re-conquered by the Roman Catholic Habsburgs, who by then resided in Spain. In 1581, the Northern and Southern Provinces had been divided when the Northern portion (which approximated the area covered by the present-day Netherlands) declared itself the independent Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Southern provinces were re-catholicized, whereas the Republic had become principally Protestant in a process of confessionalization. The two main sixteenth-century changes we have described — the economically-driven need to educate the new urban elites, and the religious developments which issued from the Reformation — met in Latin drama, a medium often written by humanists to educate students in Latin, morality and Christianity, which therefore had a religious impact. In the Low Countries, we see the division between ‘North’ and ‘South’, and the confessionalization connected with that separation, clearly mirrored in contemporary Latin plays in particularly striking ways. In the Southern provinces, drama produced by the Catholic religious orders, and especially by the Society of Jesus, prevailed, while in the North Protestant drama dominated. To explore the role of religion and theology in neo-Latin drama in the Low Countries in greater depth, I will now turn to some important examples of plays by Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist dramatists, which should serve as evidence of various trends and tendencies within the region across the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.[footnoteRef:3] [3: A recent overview of neo-Latin drama from the Low Countries may be found in Jan Bloemendal, ‘Neo-Latin Drama in the Low Countries’, in Jan Bloemendal and Howard B. Norland (eds.), Neo-Latin Drama and Theatre in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 293-364.]

Religion, Theology and Drama

In its relation to dramatic expression, the complex and wide-ranging concept of religion needs some careful definition; religion here is taken to include people’s beliefs on the one hand, and their practice on the other, which are both reflected in the neo-Latin plays of the period. . Belief often stems from how an individual might answer questions such as ‘who is God?’; ‘what is the relationship between God and humankind?’; ‘what is a person’s role in the universe?’; ‘what role should religion play in one’s life?’, and so on, but such individually determined answers and convictions might not necessarily coincide with the official doctrines of the Church, as was also the case in some forms of late medieval lay piety. Practice can be characterised as whatever a person does in everyday life that might have a religious motivation or underpinning: depending on one’s affiliation, this might include attending Catholic mass or Protestant service, praying, making the sign of the cross, reading the Bible, and the like.

Despite its specific academic remit, theology is of course intimately associated with religion. We might characterise here as a broadly scientific way of looking at religion,[footnoteRef:4] which, even if we limit it solely to Christianity, is also multifarious, and perhaps the most influential form it takes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is biblical theology. Early modern theologians made a considerable intellectual effort to discern the beliefs and practices of people in the Bible, and were committed to the two scholarly fields of exegesis [understanding the narratives of the Bible in their proper historical context] and hermeneutics [applying one’s understanding of a Biblical story to daily life]. As a formal academic discipline in the period, theology also included dogmatics [the treatment of theoretical truths of faith concerning God and creation that can be distilled from the Bible] and ethics [rules for everyday life be derived from Scripture]. That said, theological studies changed substantially across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and these changes directly affected the plays produced in educational institutions. Whereas the main concern of medieval scholastic theology in previous centuries had been a theoretical understanding of God and of the relationship between man and God, the humanists aimed at an internalization of religion and at the practical application of Christian tenets to daily life. They rejected the weight which scholastic theologians laid on abstract ideas and universal truths, as well as the bad Latin the medieval scholars used — at least in their view.[footnoteRef:5] [4: See David F. Ford, Theology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 16: ‘Theology deals with questions of meaning, truth, beauty, and practice raised in relation to religions and pursued through a range of academic disciplines.’] [5: See, for instance, Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004).]

A religious statement needs to come from a particular theological standpoint, whether consciously held or not, and this axiom affects a majority of the Latin plays produced on religious subjects in this period. At the same time, anyone who has studied neo-Latin drama will be aware of the fact that besides these plays’ status as forms of religious and theological representation, their authors also wrote them to instruct students in Latin grammar and vocabulary, to increase their fluency in that language, and, as importantly, as a theatrical event intended to entertain their audiences. As evidence for the intellectual and social significance of Latin drama as well as its vernacular counterparts, we can point to the fact that early modern European theologians apparently felt compelled to adopt a stance towards drama throughout the period. Many opposed or were hostile towards it, because of the theatre’s general reputation for moral dissoluteness in the period, which some writers, following Saint Augustine’s anti-theatrical denunciations, attributed to drama’s roots in pagan religion, while others based their attacks on their perceptions of acting as a kind of deceit.[footnoteRef:6] But other theologians, including, perhaps most influentially, Martin Luther, were more favourably inclined towards plays because of their didactic potential, especially if they represented religious stories. Luther famously supported the dramatization of certain passages from the Bible, especially those from the Old Testament and the apocrypha: [6: See Donnalee Dox, The Idea of the Theater in Latin Christian Thought: Augustine to the Fourteenth Century (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2004).]

Vnd Gott gebe | das die Griechen jre weise | Comedien vnd Tragedien zu spielen | von den Jüden genomen haben | Wie auch viel ander Weisheit vnd Gottesdienst etc. Denn Judith gibt eine gute | ernste| dapffere Tragedien | So gibt Tobias eine feine liebliche | gottselige Comedien.

[May God grant that the Greeks learned their way of performing comedies and tragedies from the Jews, just as other insights, religious ceremonies, etc. Then Judith is the proper subject matter for a serious, heroic tragedy; Tobias is the plot for a gentle, devout comedy].[footnoteRef:7] [7: Martin Luther: ‘Vorrede auffs Buch Tobie’, in D. Martin Luther, Die gantze Heilige Schrifft Deudsch. Wittenberg 1545, ed. by Hans Volz and Heinz Blanke (Munich: Rogner and Bernhard, 1972), vol. 2, 1731–32, esp. 1731, quoted by Cora Dietl, ‘Neo-Latin Humanist and Protestant Drama in Germany’, in Bloemendal and Norland, (eds.), Neo-Latin Drama and Theatre, 103-83 (148).]

Following in Luther’s footsteps, Protestant Biblical drama became, as Wolfram Washof has recently argued of Biblical exemplary characters, ‘a sermon, catechesis and an act of worship or a service’.[footnoteRef:8] Washof examines religious drama from the perspective of religious practice, suggesting that the audience’s experience of the play would resemble listening to a sermon delivered by a preacher, a lesson taught to the uninitiated, or a service in which the assembled congregation could learn and (in terms of their beliefs) absorb the content conveyed by these situations represented in dramatic form. Seen from this angle, the protagonists of Biblical plays constitute examples of beliefs and practices, as well as of right behaviour, and both characters and plays preach the Gospel as revealed in Old Testament stories and New Testament parables. Washof lists each lesson an audience may learn from each story, but in my opinion this approach does not accurately reflect the impact either of biblical stories or of theatrical performance, since it reduces both to a single dimension. I would argue instead that a character in a play based on the Bible can fulfil several functions at the same time: to take one particularly influential Renaissance example, the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), for example, may symbolize both the Gentiles who finally found God and the sinful and penitent Christian. The many interpretations this particular parable permitted, and the possibilities of deploying it in narratives of licentiousness and repentance, as well as the facts that it was recounted by Jesus himself and that contemporary audiences were very familiar with the story, made the figure of the prodigal son especially important for neo-Latin and other early modern dramatists.[footnoteRef:9] [8: Wolfram Washof, Die Bibel auf der Bühne: Exempelfiguren und protestantische Theologie im lateinischen und deutschen Bibeldrama der Reformationszeit (Münster: Rhema, 2007), 55.] [9: See, for instance, Richard Helgerson, The Elizabethan Prodigals (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), and Joannes F.M. Kat, De verloren zoon als letterkundig motief (Amsterdam: Babeliowsky, 1952).]

In most cases of sacred drama, the authors adhere to the Biblical narrative. As Gerardus Johannes Vossius remarked in 1647 in his Poeticae institutiones, summarizing ideas about Biblical drama: ‘As to sacred arguments I add in particular that what Holy Scripture says should be said here; what is contrary to it may not be said, what Scripture neither says nor denies should be said with moderation, that is, only what is probable should be set forth’.[footnoteRef:10] But these rules were not always observed during the period. The Flanders schoolmaster Petrus Papaeus, for example, chose the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 29-37) as the subject for his Samarites (1539), and adapted the story by conflating it with that of the prodigal son, more or less identifying the ‘man who fell among thieves’ with the son. The first three acts represent this man’s vice-ridden life; thieves, parasites and lovers are depicted amidst Terentian scenery and given Terentian names. The young man, called Aegio, leaves his adopted father Megadorus; the devil Leno [‘Brothel-keeper’] seduces him with the help of the parasite Gula [‘Gluttony’] and the slave Hedylogus [‘Sweet-speaker’] loves the girl Sarcophilia [‘Loving-of-Flesh’] who lives in Jericho. This meretrix [‘prostitute’], they tell him, is already fatally in love with him. On his journey he is robbed by the thieves Cupido, Bacchus and Death, and then helped by the Samaritan. [10: Vossius, Poeticarum Institutionum libri tres, 1. 5. 33: ‘Illud particulatim de sacro addam argumento, in hoc esse dicenda quae sacra dicit Scriptura; quae repugnant non dicenda; quae nec dicit nec negat Scriptura sobrie dicenda, nempe solum promenda quae sunt verisimilia’; see Vossius, Poeticarum Institutionum libri tres / Institutes of Poetics in Three Books, ed. by Jan Bloemendal (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 240-41.]

The play is completely allegorical in terms of its main story too: Aegio represents mankind, his master Eubulus [‘Good Advice’] reason, Megadorus God, and the oil the Samaritan uses for Aegio represents the Holy Spirit’s grace. The story is interpreted in the sense of early Christianity, equating the Samaritan with Christ and with the Church; the Samaritan handing over Aegio to the innkeeper to take care of him stands for Christ handing over the Church to St. Peter and his heirs.[footnoteRef:11] Thus, the story is represented on several levels: literally, the story is told and shown; morally, it is a warning against a life of sin and an exhortation to do good; and anagogically, it is intended as a Catholic response to Gnapheus’ Acolastus mirroring the act of salvation, and justifying and glorifying the power of the Church. [11: Cf. Bloemendal, ‘Neo-Latin Drama in the Low Countries’, 320-1; see also Parente, Religious Drama, 73.]

Two Roman Catholic Authors from the Northern Netherlands:

Georgius Macropedius and Cornelius Laurimanus

The Dutch Roman Catholic priest, school rector and playwright Georgius Macropedius (Joris van Lanckvelt, 1487-1558) was educated, as Erasmus had been, by the Brethren of the Common Life, who adhered to the devotio moderna.[footnoteRef:12] He worked as a teacher himself and a rector at schools run by the Brethren in ’s-Hertogenbosch, Liège and Utrecht, and started writing plays for performance by his pupils in the first decade of the sixteenth century. He wrote twelve pieces, of which six were fabulae sacrae [Biblical plays]: Adamus (1552); Iosephus (1544); Asotus evangelicus (1537); Hypomone (1553); and Iesus scholasticus (1556). Macropedius therefore uses subjects both from the Old and New Testaments, namely the stories of Adam and Eve (Genesis 1-4, also discussed below); Joseph in Egypt (Genesis 37-50); the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32); the ‘Patience’ or ‘Endurance’ [ὑπομονή] of the beginning of the First Letter of James; the twelve-year-old Jesus teaching in the temple (Luke 2:41-52); and the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16: 19-31). Besides his fabulae sacrae, five of Macropedius’ plays were adaptations of farcical plots that already existed in vernacular form, and another, Hecastus, is an allegorical play on the theme of ‘Everyman’. Hecastus (1539), like Everyman, addresses the question of what man’s consolation is at the hour of his death, which turned out to be dangerous, because this was also the theme at the rhetoricians’ festival and theatre contest in Ghent in 1535, where some of the plays performed tended to present heterodox responses to that question, suggesting ‘grace’ or ‘God’s mercy’ instead of ‘Church’, ‘confession’, ‘contrition’ or ‘good deeds’. The contest was the cause of repressive governmental measures. Macropedius himself, too, seems to have roused suspicions about his orthodoxy, and in 1552 he published a new, uncontroversial version of his play.[footnoteRef:13] [12: For further recent discussion of Macropedius and his work, see Henk Giebels and Frans Slits, Georgius Macropedius 1487-1558: Leven en werk van een Brabantse humanist (Tilburg: Stichting Zuidelijk Historisch Contact Tilburg, 2005); Jan Bloemendal (ed.), The Latin Playwright Georgius Macropedius (1487-1558) in European Contexts, special issue of European Medieval Drama 13 (2009); Guillaume van Gemert, ‘Macropedius’, in Wilhelm Kühlmann, Jan-Dirk Müller, Michael Schilling, Johann Anselm Steiger and Friedrich Vollhardt (eds.), Frühe Neuzeit in Deutschland 1520-1620: Literaturwissenschaftliches Verfasserlexikon, Vol. 4 (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2015), cols. 238-52.] [13: See Frank Leys, ‘Macropedius [...] leves et facetas fecit olim fabulas: Een opmerkelijke evolutie in de toneelstukken van Georgius Macropedius’ in Handelingen der Koninklijke Zuldnederlandse Kaatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis, 40 (1986), 87-96; and Leys, ‘L’“Hecastus”de Macropedius et le “Landjuweel” de Gand (1539)’, Humanistica Lovaniensia 37 (1988), 267-68.]

To explore Macropedius’ attitude towards religion and drama, we will discuss one of his last plays, Adamus (1552).[footnoteRef:14] In this fabula sacra, Macropedius portrays the first human couple Adam and Eve on a journey through time and Biblical history leading up to the Annunciation and Mary’s visit to her cousin Elisabeth, described in Luke 1: 39, as they await Christ’s birth. They do not experience the birth of Christ himself, since Christ is the ‘new Adam’ and it seems that for Macropedius the old and the new Adam cannot be represented together. We might initially see this as an example of a general cultural reticence about portraying Christ, but Macropedius did not abstain from making him the protagonist of his later play Iesus scholasticus. The first couple of mankind are guided by a guardian angel to encounter Abraham and Isaac, Moses and Aaron, and King David, among other figures. Of some individuals they meet, such as Abraham, Moses and David, it is explicitly said: ‘He refers to the true Christ, but he himself is not the Christ’ [Hic veri typum Christi geret, non Christus ipse verus est; ll. 1448-49].[footnoteRef:15] This plot device means that Adam and Eve have to continue their journey after each visit, in their quest for the Christ, and Macropedius therefore stresses the typological character of these Old Testament figures, making Eve, for instance, ask Adam when they visit the young pastor David: ‘Please explain how David can be a type of Christ. I do not know how this little boy can be a figure of Christ’ [Sed David ut Christi typum gerat, explica. Qui puer adhuc Christum figuret, nescio; ll. 1460-61]. Moreover, Macropedius can also teach his pupils some highlights of Biblical history, including the Ten Commandments, the annunciation, and the hymns sung by Mary and Elisabeth. In its structure, Adamus is an episodic drama, in which teaching — especially of religious matters — prevails over dramatic action, although there is some dramatic tension because the audience’s curiosity is provoked by who Adam and Eve will meet next and what lesson might thereby be learned. [14: On Adamus, see also Giebels and Slits, Georgius Macropedius, 266-74; Frans-Willem Korsten, ‘“But did they not, with it, burn the excrements as well?”: Macropedius’s Experimental Plays, or Humanism as Avant-garde’, in Bloemendal (ed.), Georgius Macropedius, 117-136.] [15: Macropedius, Adamus, ed. by Frans P. T. Slits; CD-ROM included with Henk Giebels and Frans Slits, Georgius Macropedius (1487-1558): Leven en werk van een Brabantse humanist (Tilburg: Stichting Zuidelijk Historisch Contact, 2005).]

Similar instruction had been given by Macropedius in his earlier play Iosephus (1544). At the end of the play, Joseph marries Asenath, the daughter of Potiphar and his wife. In earlier scenes, Joseph had acted as a kind of catechist, teaching Asenath the elementary tenets of Christian faith such as phrases from the Symbolum [‘Creed’] and the doctrine of the Holy Trinity (we see this, for instance, in I. iv). The anachronism of introducing Christian elements into pre-Christian, Old Testament contexts seems not to have bothered the rector scholae; for him, it was apparently more important to show that Catholic Christianity had already won over Potiphar’s family. Ethics also play a role in this Biblical play: Asenath’s parents Potiphar and Aegla, for example, repent and acknowledge in a kind of tragic anagnorisis that they deserve to be punished and do penance, and so Macropedius links beliefs about Christian behaviour and remorse with practices of ‘doing’ penance. Exegesis and hermeneutics also play an important part, as Macropedius interprets Joseph as a prefiguration of Christ, and several times in his play he adds as a kind of epithet the words ‘Saviour of the World’ [in Greek, ‘Σωτῆρ κόσμου’] to the name of Joseph, in the Christian tradition of typological exegesis of the Old Testament.[footnoteRef:16] Despite his credentials as a humanist pedagogue with an interest in biblical theology, Macropedius also stands in the tradition of medieval exegesis, based on the fourfold interpretation of biblical texts: sensus literalis [‘literal sense’], sensus allegoricus [‘allegorical sense’], sensus moralis [‘moral sense’] and sensus anagogicus [‘anagogical sense’, i.e. related either to the history of the Church or to the end of the world].[footnoteRef:17] In Josephus, Macropedius presents parts of the literal story, offers an allegorical interpretation of some of its elements (such as characterising Joseph as a prefiguration of Christ), a moral one (as in the repentance of Potiphar and his wife), and in the anagogical sense Aegla and Asenath represent Judaism and Christianity. [16: This is the rendering of the Egyptian name of Joseph, Safnath-Pineach. On the Joseph story in drama, see Jean Lebeau, Salvator mundi: L’ ‘exemple’ de Joseph dan le théâtre allemand au xvie siècle, 2 vols. (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1997) and Ruprecht Wimmer, Jesuitentheater: Didaktik und Fest: Das Exemplum des ägyptischen Joseph auf den deutschen Bühnen der Gesellschaft Jesu (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1982).] [17: ‘Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, / Moralis quid agas, quo tendas [quid speres] anagogia’ [‘The literal teaches what has happened, the allegory shows what you should believe, the moral meaning teaches what you should do, the anagogy where you should aim [or ‘what you should hope for’]’]; see Rotulus pugillaris, Chapter 1 (De introductoriis scientiae theologicae), ed. P. A Walz, O.P., Angelicum 6 (1929), 256. Cf. Henri de Lubac, S.J., Exégèse médiévale: Les quatre sens de l'Ecriture 4 vols. (Paris: Aubier, 1959-1964); and McGrath, Intellectual Origins, 148-50.]

Part of the instruction offered by the play is found in the song by a chorus of all performers at the end of the second act, who sing of the creation in the form of a Sapphic ode (ll. 306-339):

CHORUS.

Per familiam praesentem.

Turbidi plastes Deus unus orbis

Condidit lucem tenebris fugatis,

Has volens noctem vocitari, et illam

Esse diurnam.

Inter effusas simul orbis undas

Condidit caelum, ut στερέωμα firmum

Sive discrimen sine mixtione

Esset utrisque.

Colligens undas locum in unum ab imo

Aridam iussit superare, ut herbas

Germinet fructusque homini creando, et

Omni animanti.

Solis et lunae rutilas lucernas

Fecit, ut Phoebus niteat diei,

Atque cum stellis vaga luna nocti

Luceat atrae.

Duxit ex lymphis volucres, et omne

Quicquid in ponto vegetatur, et quod

Reptat aut serpit, benedixit atque

Crescere iussit.

Duxit e terra pecudes, ferasque

Bestias multae variaeque formae.

Iussit et fetu decorare terram

Multiplicato.

Finxit e limo rubicundo Adamum,

Praeditum mente et ratione fultum,

Quo Dei formae similis praeesset

Omnibus unus.

Gratias ergo meritas agamus

Omnium plastae, qui ut ametur, ultro

Propter humani generis salutem

Cuncta creavit.

Repetitio ad singulos quaternarios:

Propter humani generis salutem

Cuncta creavit

[Chorus sung by the actors on stage.

The Sculptor of the world without form, the one God, dispelled darkness and created light. He wanted darkness to be called night, and light day.

In the middle of the vast waters of the world he also created heaven, to be a solid ‘firmament’, that is, a complete separation between both waters.

He gathered the waters of the world unto one place and thus let the dry land appear, to bring forth grass and fruits for man that would be created and for every living creature.

He created the reddish lights of sun and moon, that Phoebus Apollo would shine in the daytime, and the erring moon, together with the star, in the black night.

From water he made the birds and everything that swarms in the sea, and he blessed everything that is creeping or prowling, ordering it to be fruitful.

From earth he made cattle and wild animals of every form. He ordered them to adorn the earth by multiplying.

From red clay he formed Adam, endowed with intelligence and supported by reason, in order to be the only to have dominion over everything, since he was in God’s image.

Let us therefore rightly thank him who formed everything who in order to be loved of his own accord created everything for the salvation [i.e. benefit] of the human race.

Refrain:

For the salvation [i.e. benefit] of the human race he created everything.]

In this passage, we see that Macropedius rephrases the Biblical story of the creation of the world. Whereas the Vulgate uses the terms creare [‘to create’] and creator, the humanist speaks of plastes, from the Greek πλασσώ [‘to form’, ‘to mould’, or ‘to sculpt’], which of course is an interpretation based on the concept of creatio ex nihilo [‘creation from nothing’] to mould existing chaotic entities. Diverging from Biblical phrasing, he uses classical formulations such as Phoebus for the sun. He describes Man (in the person of Adam), following contemporary humanistic interpretation, as praeditum mente et ratione fultum [‘gifted with brains and reason’]. He also omits Biblical phrases such as et vidit Deus quod esset bonum [‘and God saw that it was good’]. Macropedius does not straightforwardly tell the story, but formulates it according to a particular interpretation; the creation of the world is presented as an act for the benefit and salvation of mankind, who can (he implies) control this world with his mind and reason. In this respect, Macropedius is unlike most other contemporary dramatists who tend to incorporate such explicit interpretations within a preface, a prologue or an epilogue. There is one other remarkable exception, as Peter Macardle has pointed out: the allegory of the prodigal son in Gnapheus’ Acolastus (1529) pervades the entire work in an intricate play between the sensus literalis and the sensus allegoricus.[footnoteRef:18] [18: See Peter G. Macardle, The Allegory of Acolastus. Biblical Allegoresis and its Literary Reflex in Gnapheus’s Acolastus (1529) (Durham: Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2007).]

If we look at Macropedius’ plays, we can ask ourselves how ‘Catholic’ they are, and in relation to their theological content, especially, they keep pace with medieval allegorical interpretation and what we might think of as ‘mainstream’ Roman-Catholic dogmatics. However, as well as discussing religious and biblical matters in the form of a classical comedy in classical language, Macropedius’ theology could also be seen as rather loose. His Hecastus, for example, particularly, contains ideas that could be considered Protestant about the notion of salvation through grace. For this reason, Macropedius is representative of Dutch humanist playwrights of the earlier sixteenth century, writing during a time of confessional flux when religious and theological issues were not yet settled, so that people could more easily mix ‘old’ and ‘new’ ideas. The instruction in religious matters offered by Macropedius’ Latin plays is nonetheless quite straightforward.

Cornelius Laurimanus (ca. 1530-1573), one of the next generation of Dutch neo-Latin playwrights,acted similarly. Continuing the established tradition of pedagogue-dramatists, Laurimanus was Macropedius’ successor as rector scholae in Utrecht, and wrote three plays: Esthera regina (1560), Miles Christianus (The Christian Soldier; 1562) and Exodus, sive transitus Maris Rubri (Exodus, or the Crossing of the Red Sea; 1562). He wished Exodus to be interpreted anagogically and typologically.[footnoteRef:19] Therefore in the play, the Israelites represent the Church which is constantly assaulted by Pharaoh, who stands, in this case, for the diabolical personification of Lutheran heresies (Exodus, 61r): [19: See Jan Bloemendal, ‘Cornelius Laurimanus als Dramatiker – Theater und Theologie gegen Ketzereien’, in Reinhold F. Glei and Robert Seidel (eds.), Das lateinische Drama der Frühen Neuzeit: Exemplarische Einsichten in Praxis und Theorie (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2008), 101-32.]

In Israelitis statuite ecclesiam

Dei, ut quidem erat, quam nunquam cessat persequi

Communis omnium hostis diabolus. Hanc premit,

Huic insidiatur, hanc studet in tyrannidem

Suam corripere, hanc ipse pernox circuit

Tanquam leo rugiens, vt quem ex hac devoret

[...] Videmus vel hodie

Quantis et ipsa haereticorum fallacijs

Quantis iactetur usque tempestatibus,

Qua peccatorum servitute non ea

Prematur, in quem denique orbis angulum

Propulsa sit.

[...]

Hic principes monentur reges ac duces

Vt orthodoxam ecclesiam audiant, ferant

Verbi ministros et bene monitis obtemperent.

[You should see in the Israelites the Church of God, as it was. The enemy of all, the Devil, constantly persecutes it. He suppresses it, waylays it, tries to pull it into his tyranny and wanders around at night as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour [a reference to 1 Peter 5: 8] [...] Even today we see how many dissembling heresies swing the Church back and forth on the waves, how each slavery of sins suppresses it, and to what a small angle of the word it is expelled. [...] Here princes, kings and leaders are summoned to listen to the orthodox Church and to endure the servants of the Word of God and obey their beneficial warnings.]

But within the play Pharaoh also represents other contemporary enemies of the Church, in this case, the Muslims, a figuration which is quite extraordinary in neo-Latin drama issuing from this region in the period (Exodus, 62r):[footnoteRef:20] [20: To the best of my knowledge, no research into the representation of either the Islamic world or the Ottoman empire in neo-Latin drama from the Netherlands has been done. For recent work on Islam and Erasmus, see, e.g., Erika Rummel, The Erasmus Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 315-32. On Latin writing and the Islamic world more broadly, see, for instance, Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and early modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Margaret Meserve, Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); and Dag Nikolaus Hasse, ‘Contacts with the Arab World’, in Sarah Knight and Stefan Tilg (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 279-93.]

[...] Ah, fili, neutiquam

Sodes transgrediaris vetustos terminos,

Quos posuerunt tibi patres tui. Quod si

Factum fuisset, non iam sentiremus in

Nostros fines propagatum Mohemeticum

Regnum, aut late adeo saeviret noster Pharo,

Nec huc malorum perventum fuisset. Hoc

Notant plagae decem.

[[...] Oh, Son, please do not transgress the old borders that your fathers have set for you. For if this rule would have been obeyed, we would not have witnessed the Muslim empire spread across our territory, our Pharaoh would not have raged so widely and we would not have come into so much mischief. This is the meaning of the ten plagues.]

Whereas Macropedius limited himself to general tenets of Christian faith and remained quite moderate in his ideological content, Laurimanus’ plays are characterised by their polemic, arising from his own struggle to preserve his native town Utrecht as Roman Catholic. His efforts were in vain, however, because in 1580 Utrecht officially switched to Protestantism, and so his drama can be viewed as representative of the process of confessionalization, showing how entrenched positions in religious matters had become within the period. In this respect, especially compared with the theological fluidity we have observed in Macropedius’ writing, the work of Laurimanus is typical of a new generation of playwrights working in an age when confessions had crystallized and were more concertedly under attack. As a consequence, religious and theological didacticism is more implicit within the plays of Laurimanus themselves, but becomes more explicit and polemical in the explanatory parts, particularly the perorations to his plays Cumulatively, as well, his choice of subject matter – the Old Testament stories and the narrative of the Christian Soldier – also reveal his Catholic background.

A Protestant Playwright in the North: Guilielmus Gnapheus

On the other side of the Reformation confessional divide, a schoolmaster from The Hague, Guilielmus Gnapheus (Willem de Volder; 1493-1568) who started to write school plays in the third decade of the sixteenth century, was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church in his native town because of his reformed ideas.[footnoteRef:21] He went into exile, travelled to Poland, and became rector of the Latin school in Elbing in the north of that country, but was persecuted there too, eventually departing for Königsbergen where he was accused by Lutheran colleagues not only of heresy but also of neglecting his duties. In the trial over the latter controversy, his dramas Acolastus (1529), Morosophus (The Foolish Wise Person; 1541), and Hypocrisis (Hypocrisy; 1544) were used as ‘evidence’.[footnoteRef:22] His most famous and influential play was the first one he wrote, Acolastus [from ἀκόλαστος, ‘lawless’, or ‘uncontrolled’], which is based on the parable of the prodigal son told in Luke 15: 11-32.[footnoteRef:23] The plot is as follows: Philautus [‘Self-Love’] admonishes his friend Acolastus [‘Uncontrolled’], the prodigal, to leave his father Pelargus. The prodigal does so, but is robbed of his belonging by two scoundrels, Pamphagus [‘All-eating’] and Pantolabus [‘All-snatching’]. Then the innkeeper Sannio and the prostitute Lais cheat him, he loses the rest of his money by gambling, and in his penniless state he is forced to work for the farmer Chremes. Meanwhile, Eubulus [‘Good-advice’] advices the father Pelargus to forgive his son. Acolastus, desperately returns to his father, convinced that he will be accepted again, and he is heartily welcomed.[footnoteRef:24] The play adheres closely to the Biblical story, but expands Luke 15: 13, particularly (‘[he] wasted his substance with riotous living’). In the scenes in which this life in lust and love is depicted, Gnapheus creates a Terentian atmosphere in which prostitutes and rogues, inn-keepers and criminals are presented as they act in Roman comedies, but unlike the plots of Terence’s plays, he allows the prodigal a moment of anagnorisis when he discovers the world’s deceptiveness and his own depravity, leading to repentance and his own conversion. It is a play written by a Protestant, but is it also a Protestant play?[footnoteRef:25] In other words: is it ‘Protestant’ in terms of beliefs and practices? [21: See Verena Demoed, ‘Wie van gevaar houdt, moet dat met de dood bekopen’: De opiniërende strategieën van Gulielmus Gnapheus (1493-1568) (PhD thesis, Amsterdam, 2011); and Bloemendal, ‘Neo-Latin Drama in the Low Countries’, 305-6.] [22: See Demoed, ‘Theatre in Court: The Heresy Trial against the Playwright Gnapheus and the Confessionalization of the Lutheran Church’, in Jan Bloemendal, Peter G. F. Eversmann and Elsa Strietman (eds.), Drama, Performance and Debate: Theatre and Public Opinion in the Early Modern Period (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 115-141; on Morosophus and Hypocrisis see Demoed, ‘Stultitia on Stage: Gnapheus’ Foolish Scientist and the Praise of Folly of Eramus’, in Jan Bloemendal and Philip Ford (eds.), Neo-Latin Drama: Forms, Functions, Receptions (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2008), 165-83; Demoed, ‘The Morality of Hypocrisy: Gnapheus’ Hypocrisis and the Lutheran Reformation’, in Jan Bloemendal, Arjan van Dixhoorn and Elsa Strietman (eds.), Literary Cultures and Public Opinion in the Low Countries, 1450-1650 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 91-119.] [23: Gnapheus, Acolastus. De filio prodigo comoedia Acolasti titulo inscripta (Antwerp: Godfriedus Dumaeus, 1529); for an English version, see Gnapheus, Acolastus: A Latin Play of the XVIth Century, ed. and trans. by W.E.D. Atkinson (London, ON: University of Western Ontario, 1964); a modern edition is Gulielmus Gnapheus, Acolastus, ed. Piet Minderaa (Zwolle: Tjeenk Willink, 1958); see also Macardle, Allegory of Acolastus, and the review by Jan Bloemendal in Church History and Religious Culture, 89 (2009), 329-334; and Demoed, ‘Wie van gevaar houdt’, 87-114.] [24: Cf. Bloemendal, ‘Neo-Latin Drama in the Low Countries’, 305.] [25: See Stephen Wailes, ‘Is Gnapheus’ Acolastus a Lutheran Play?’, in Francis Gentry et al. (eds.), Semper Idem et Novus: Festschrift for Frank Banta (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1988), 345-65; Washof, Die Bibel auf der Bühne, 304-306; James A. Parente, Jr., Religious Drama and the Humanist Tradition: Christian Theater in Germany and in the Netherlands 1500-1680 (Leiden: Brill, 1987), 44-5; and Bloemendal, ‘Neo-Latin Drama in the Low Countries’, 305-6.]

Primarily, it is drama, not theology that is presented in Acolastus, which allows several interpretations at the same time. If one focuses on the theme of grace in the play, exemplified by the father who graciously receives his sinful son, it may be considered a Lutheran play, given that the doctrine of sola gratia [‘grace alone’] is a shibboleth of Lutheran doctrine. However, other Protestant movements as well as the Catholic Church were also not averse to grace, although most of these merely opposed placing an excessive emphasis on it. There are certainly moments of grace in the play, as when Eubulus advises the prodigal son’s father, Pelargus (ll. 194-197):

[...] Dehinc tuas

Sub alas si recurrerit atque supplicem

In gratiam tum admiseris, certe hinc magis

Tibi filium alligaueris, ac dudum fuit.

[[...] If he hurries back to the shelter of your wings and you then extend your grace [gratia] to him as a suppliant, you will indeed bind your son to you more tightly than ever, even as he was a while ago].[footnoteRef:26] [26: Acolastus, trans. Atkinson, 103.]

In this interpretation of the Biblical story, Gnapheus stresses the grace bestowed on man, mirroring Luther’s emphasis on God’s grace, and man’s gratefulness for this grace and his obligation to obey the Lord’s commands.

The play ends with a peroration, probably spoken by the headmaster (ll. 1293-1301):

In hoc adeo Christus parabolam ipse adhibet,

Vt quam dolemus nos Deo aduersarios

Iraeque nasci filios, tam nos iuuet

Contra, in patris longe optimi quod gratiam

Rediuimus per Spiritus charismata.

Quae si tibi persuasa erunt, per nos satis,

Spectator optime, nihil est, quod amplius

Sperabis a nobis. Frui istis gaudiis

Tibi datur in omnes dies. Plaude et vale.

[Christ himself employed his parable to this end, that the more we grieve at being in conflict with God and born the children of wrath, the more we may rejoice at being restored to our Father’s grace [gratia] through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. If this lesson has been truly learned, most worthy spectator, we have done all that can be expected of us. It is granted you to partake of that bliss forever. Clap your hands and farewell!][footnoteRef:27] [27: Cf. Acolastus, trans. Atkinson, 203, which I have slightly adapted.]

The peroration argues that charismata or ‘gifts of the Spirit’ — the word ‘charisma’ comes from χάρις [‘grace’; cf. 1 Corinthians 12: 8-11] — help people to attain grace, which is not exclusively a Lutheran tenet, for the contemporary Catholic church also laid emphasis on charismata and grace. Gnaphaeus’ point was that Luther laid too much emphasis on grace and on grace being given by God ‘for nothing’.

Atkinson has asked whether Acolastus is an elaboration of the controversy between Luther and Erasmus on free will and free choice, recorded in Erasmus’ De libero arbitrio (On free choice; 1524) and Luther’s De servo arbitrio (On bound choice; 1525), represented by the characters Pelargus and Eubulus respectively within the play.[footnoteRef:28] Atkinson argues that the prodigal son made a choice according to what he thought was his own free will, to lead another life, but was captured by rogues in that life he chose. Eubulus had advised the father, Pelargus, to bestow grace upon his son, for Aegrotus non nisi medica manu/ opus habet [‘It is a physician’s touch that is needed by a sick man’],[footnoteRef:29] an adaptation of Matthew 9:12: At Iesus audiens ait: “Non est opus valentibus medico, sed male habentibus” [‘But Jesus, listening, said: “It is not the healthy who need a physician, but those that are sick”’]. Eubulus thus expresses the view that the prodigal — like every man and woman — is sick and needs the help of a doctor, or, in doctrinal terms, that he is a sinner and needs God’s grace. [28: Ibid., ‘Introduction’, 51-67. Cf. Erasmus, In evangeliium Lucae paraphrasis, the paraphrase of the parable of the prodigal son found in Luke 15: 11-32.] [29: Gnapheus, Acolastus ll. 1191-1192, trans. Atkinson, Acolastus, 195.]

Macardle, in a masterly interpretation, discusses Acolastus in the tradition of Biblical exegesis. Humanists, although they tended to oppose medieval, and especially scholastic, theology, often stuck, as we have previously mentioned, to the fourfold exegesis proposed by medieval theology, that a story could be interpreted in a literal, tropological or moral, typological and anagogical sense, mapping respectively onto the story itself, the lessons to be learnt from it, its meaning as prefiguration or type of Christ, and its meaning for the Last Judgment or the Church. Macardle shows that all these meanings (in the sense of beliefs) are present in this prodigal play. But whereas other plays confine the exegesis of the story to the prologue or the epilogue, Acolastus contains such hidden meanings throughout. One can therefore conclude that Acolastus, with its stress on grace, is a Lutheran, or, in any case, Protestant, play; that it is also an Erasmian play, with its stress on free will; and that it is aligned too with medieval exegesis and its fourfold interpretation.

However, the play in itself is not polemical. A contemporary of Gnapheus, the French Roman-Catholic teacher and theologian Gabriel Prateolus (Gabriel Dupréau, 1511-1588) published in 1554 a commentary on the play which mainly stresses the Terentian and Plautine allusions and quotations in it, and was able draw moral lessons from each scene using quotations from Cicero. Prateolus only gives a more theological interpretation when explaining the Peroratio, not without quotations from Ambrose and Augustine. So just like Macropedius, Gnapheus writing in the first decades of the sixteenth century, is not overtly polemical in this early play; although he changed his tone in a later play, Hypocrisis (1544), an attack on the hypocrisy Gnapheus saw in the Roman Catholic Church. Acolastus, as we have seen in Macropedius’ work, dates from a time when theological issues were still up for debate, before actual confessionalization fixed people’s denominational affiliations more firmly.

Two Southern Playwrights:

Jacobus Cornelius Lummenaeus a Marca and Nicolaus Vernulaeus

The Southern part of the Netherlands became Catholic again after the fall of Antwerp in 1585, when it was divided from the Northern parts which subsequently became the Dutch Republic. This secession inevitably meant that the playwrights active in the South during the seventeenth century worked in a very different ideological context. One example is a Benedictine monk from Ghent, Jacobus Cornelius Lummenaeus a Marca (ca. 1580-ca. 1628), who wrote the tragedy Carcer Babylonius (Babylonian Captivity, 1610; reprinted as Sedecias) on the capture of Jerusalem by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, the blinding of the Jewish King Zedekiah and the killing of his sons.[footnoteRef:30] In intertextual terms, this play picks up the theme of the magistrate Robert Garnier’s (ca. 1545-1590) French tragedy Les Juifves (The Jews; 1583). Lummenaeus a Marca’s play has been boldly interpreted by James Parente as a portrayal of William of Orange, whose dominion should also have been recaptured by the Habsburg kings.[footnoteRef:31] Whether or not this is true, his play can easily be viewed as a plea for the reunification of the Low Countries under Spanish rule, and, inevitably, for a return to the Roman Catholic faith, and therefore exemplifies the confessionalization of drama in the Low Countries during the seventeenth century. [30: On this playwright, see Ron J. Gruijters, An Eloquent Enigma: The Dramas of Jacobus Cornelius Lummenaeus a Marca (c. 1580 – c. 1628) and their Contexts (PhD thesis, Amsterdam, 2010).] [31: Parente, ‘The Paganization of Biblical Tragedy: The Dramas of Jacob Cornelius Lummenaeus à Marca (1570-1629)’, Humanistica Lovaniensia, 38 (1989), 209-37; see also Gruijters, An Eloquent Enigma, 137-69.]

In Carcer Babylonius, the Northern provinces rebel against the Habsburg dynasty and, as a consequence, against God himself. Nebuchadnezzar’s exclamation at the beginning of the play shows how baroque Lummenaeus a Marca’s writing is in its high-pitched affects and ambiguities. He shows the pagan Babylonian king to be both an evil character and someone who occasionally expresses the right views, and also gives us a Jewish king who has sinned against God (ll. 1-11):

Infida semper Solyma! Non umquam semel

Periura, perduellis! Ingratum caput

O Sedecia! Quo rapit praeceps furor

Vltro ruentem? Sentio, ignescunt fibrae,

Et iam citato pectore eluctans dolor

Vrit medullas, nec satis flammam tego.

Vaeh Sedecia! Testor aeternos Deos,

Et quos Olympus aureo claudit sinu

Et quos tenebrae desides vmbra tegunt,

Improbe peribis, sanguine extinguam tuo

Quae me fatigat pectoris flammam mei.

[Always faithless Jerusalem! You that are never merely once unreliable and seditious. O hated Zedekiah! Where does pernicious frenzy drag me, I who am already crashing down of my own accord? I notice it, my intestines are boiling, and grief struggling out quickly from my throbbing breast, is burning my bowels, and I cannot sufficiently hide the flame. Ah, Zedekiah! I take the eternal gods as witnesses, both those who live in the golden bosom of Mount Olympus and those who are covered by the crippling darkness with its shadow: you will perish, villain, and with your blood I will extinguish the flame in my chest that fatigues me.]

The Jewish religious rebellion against Jehovah/God is implicitly interpreted here as the political rebellion of the Dutch against Spanish dominion. Read thus, the final lines spoken by a prophet are especially telling (ll. 1168-70):

Heu quam timendum est degere inuisum Deo

Tentare foetam Numinis diri manum!

O sancte I’Houa! iustus est furor tuus.

[Ah! How terrifying it is to live hated by God, and to test the generous hand of the dire deity! O holy Jehovah! Your raging is righteous.]

Of course, for the Catholic Lummenaeus a Marca, it is the Protestants from the Northern provinces who test God’s hand and will be struck by his hatred. Carcer Babylonius illustrates clearly how the positions of these neo-Latin dramatists at the end of the sixteenth century and beginning of the seventeenth had hardened, as both Protestant and, especially, Catholic authors were writing more confessionally committed plays, and were, moreover, explicitly intertwining politics and religion in their work. During the second half of the sixteenth century, too, related to this ideological development, we also see a shift in genre from perhaps simpler comedies on a Terentian model to the increasing dominance of more complicated tragedies.

A second example of ideologically charged drama is another tragedy, written by the Louvain professor of rhetoric Nicolaus Vernulaeus (1583-1649), Gorcomienses sive fidei exilium (The Priests from Gorcum or Faith Exiled; 1610), in which Vernulaeus portrays the martyrdom of nineteen priests in the city of Gorcum, hanged by ‘sea-beggars’ (freedom fighters, but also terrorists) in 1572.[footnoteRef:32] By showing the atrocities committed by contemporary Protestants, Vernulaeus contributes to the confessionalization of neo-Latin drama in the region, as his letter of dedication to Bernard de Montgaillard (confessor to Albert, Governor General of the Habsburg Netherlands and briefly Archduke of Austria) and his consort Isabella, makes clear: [32: Nicolaus Vernulaeus, Gorcomienses, siue fidei exilium. Tragoedia. Exhibita ludis encoenalibus Louanii Anno M.DC.IX ab Alumnis Collegii Porcensis (Cologne: Bernardus Gualterus, 1610). On Vernulaeus, see Parente, Religious Drama, 89-90; Bloemendal, ‘Neo-Latin Drama in the Low Countries’, 349-50; 363-4.]

The country of the Netherlands saw them [i.e. the martyrs] in its own theatre when it made itself an enemy, shocked by the fatal uprise; but it saw them as people it admired because they were stronger than tyranny and fate, and mourned bitterly because they were killed as innocents

[Vidit illos in theatro suo Belgica, cum fatali concussa motu se sibi formaret hostem, sed vidit, quos et admiraretur tyrannide fortunaque maiores et innocentes deploraret ademptos].[footnoteRef:33] [33: Vernulaeus, Gorcomienses, 4.]

Among the characters in this historical drama are the allegories ‘Catholic Faith’ [Fides catholica] and ‘Inquisition of Heresies’ [Inquisitio haeretica]. The choruses are sung by Catholic Hollanders going into exile, Heretics and Soldiers of Gorcum respectively, and three heresies appear on stage: Calvinism, Lutheranism and Anabaptism. The play ends in a direct imitation of a Protestant tragedy by Daniel Heinsius, Auriacus, sive Libertas saucia (William of Orange, or Liberty Wounded; 1602). In Heinsius’ play — written in praise of William of Orange who had led the Protestant revolt against Catholic Spain and was subsequently assassinated — it had been Liberty who lamented her situation and went into exile, but in Gorcomienses it is Catholic Faith who is exiled and uses similar phrases (ll.123-4):

Valete Batavi, discedo Fides.

O lacrymae. Agite sed tamen, Batavi, tamen

Respicite, linquo funus hoc vobis Crucis.

Adhucne saevit ira? Nec tanta nece

Severitas satiata deponit minas?

Si displicet Fides, at heu placeat suo

Qui nos cruore lavit, et pretium sui

Repetet cruore iudicans mortalium

Sub sole noxus. Sapere serius voles

Quisquis voles; nunc funus hoc linquo tibi.

Si non perosus Numen aeternum Poli

Batave superbis, nosce Iudicem tuum

Hominumque vindicem, Creatorem tuum.

Valete, Batavi, cedo, discedo Fides.

Heu, heu Fides! Heu heu Fides!

[Farewell, Hollanders, I, Faith, am leaving. O what tears! But yet, come on, you Hollanders, but look, I leave behind for you this dead cross. Is anger still pounding? Was this austerity not saturated by so many killings, that it could stop its menaces? If Faith is displeasing, let then He who has cleansed us with his blood be pleasing and claim the price, judging with his blood the guilty mortals on earth. Whoever wish to be wise, you are too late. Now I leave behind this dead body for you. Hollander, if you rage without hating the eternal God of Heaven, get to know your Judge, the one who punishes people, your Creator. Farewell, Hollanders, I am leaving, I, Faith are going away. Ah, ah, Faith! Ah, ah, Faith!][footnoteRef:34] [34: Cf. Heinsius, Auriacus, ll. 2064–66 and 2101–5: ‘concidit, iacet iacet,/ Cor Illud orbis, magna Belgarum salus./ Heu heu heu heu; and Valete cives, sancta Libertas abit,/ Abivit ille, quem videtis hic tamen,/ Abivit ille, praevium e terris sequor./ Valete cives. Sancta Libertas abit./ Heu heu heu heu’; see Heinsius, Auriacus, sive Libertas saucia (1602), ed. by Jan Bloemendal (Voorthuizen: Florivallis, 1997), 2 vols., Vol. 1, 364; 366.]

Vernulaeus has clearly written a play which opposes the one Heinsius authored, setting itself against the Protestant, rebellious Northern provinces, and offering comfort to the inhabitants of the Southern provinces under the Habsburg rule of Albert and Isabella, thereby legitimizing their reign. Faith — that is, Catholic Faith — is leaving the ‘Batavians’, the inhabitants of the Northern provinces, especially Holland, which was considered to be the crucible of the rebellion. Moreover, Vernulaeus apparently wants to give the martyrs of Gorcum a similar status as the martyred father of his country, William of Orange. Faith is thus made into an instrument of politics, warfare and theological controversy.

Liturgy and Drama

Finally, I would like to draw attention to something often overlooked in the critical interpretation of neo-Latin drama, but which forms an integral part of the relationship between drama, religion and theology.This is the role played by the liturgy, in which religious beliefs and practices could be seen to meet. Playwrights and their audiences attended either Catholic masses or Protestant services and heard specific verbal formulations regularly in those contexts, including both the ordinarium (that part which is regular and constant, independent of the date), and the proprium (which changes according to the day in the liturgical year). In several suggestive instances, we encounter those rituals found in masses or services, as well as other elements of the liturgy, in neo-Latin plays, such as in Macropedius’ Aluta, where for the sake of humour, the formulae of exorcism are uttered to exorcise the ‘devil’ of drunkenness (ll. 529-33):

In nomine patris atque filii, sacri

Quoque spiritus cede, maledicte diabole,

Ab hac Dei famula et da honorem illi Deo,

Qui iudicare mortuos venturus est

Vivosque per flammam!

[In the name of the Father, and the Son, and also the Holy Ghost, away with you, accursed devil, from this poor girl, a servant of God, and give honour to the God who will be coming to judge the living and the death through fire!][footnoteRef:35] [35: See Macropedius, Aluta (1535), ed. by Jan Bloemendal and Jan W. Steenbeek (Voorthuizen: Florivallis, 1995). The official Catholic liturgical formula is: ‘Ergo, maledicte diabole, recognosce sententiam tuam, et da honorem Deo vivo et vero, da honorem Jesu Christo Filio eius, et Spiritui Sancto, et recede ab hoc famulo[-la] N, quia istum [-am] sibi Deus et Dominus noster Jesus Christus ad suam sanctam gratiam, fontemque Baptismatis vocare digantus est: et hoc signum sanctae crucis signat eum, quod nos fronti eius damus, tu, maledicte diabole, numquam audeas violare. Per eumdem Christum Dominum nostrum, qui venturus est iudicare vivos et mortuos, et saeculum per ignem. Amen.’ [‘Therefore, accursed devil, acknowledge thy sentence, and give honour to the living and true God, give honour to Jesus Christ, his Son, and to the Holy Spirit, and depart from this servant N., because God and our Lord Jesus Christ hath vouchsafed to call him (her) to His holy grace and benediction and to the font of Baptism. And this sign of the holy Cross, which we make upon his (her) forehead, do thou, accursed devil, never dare to violate. Through the same Christ our Lord, who shall come to judge the living and the dead’.]]

Aluta reacts by spitting out the ‘devil’. Her husband is filled with awe, fears that the situation is serious, and is only reassured by the priest. This scene, parodic of liturgical ‘ritual’, contributes significantly to the humour of the play. Another interesting instance of liturgical usage in drama is the first scene of Tobias (1598) by Macropedius’ pupil Petrus Vladeraccus (1571-1618). The scene begins with recitation of the formula Deus Abraham, Deus Isaac, Deus Israhel (l. 57), which is also the beginning of prayers during Mass, especially the Mass of adult baptism.[footnoteRef:36] [36: See Petrus Vladeraccus, Tobias (1598), ed. by Michiel Verweij (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001), 82. In his commentary, Verweij cites Exodus 3: 6: Ego sum Deus patris tui, Deus Abraham, Deus Isaac et Deus Iacob (‘I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’), but does not mention the liturgical use of the formula. Given the relative lack of research into this subject, it would be fruitful to explore further the relationship between drama and liturgy.]

Related to such practice too is the fact that plays were performed at Christian feasts, such as Corpus Christi, Shrovetide, and Christmas, and the liturgical year relates too, of course, to the academic calendar of the schools and universities at which these plays were usually staged. Such timing must also have affected, I am convinced, the interpretation or at least the reception of drama: when Macropedius’ play about Adam and Eve, Adamus, was performed at Christmas, its status as a play which prefigures Christ would have been even more conspicuous than at any other time of the year. The original performance context of Macropedius’ Aluta, too, would have enhanced its humour: it was performed before Lent, at a point of the church calendar when the play’s reversal of roles would have mirrored the theatricality and inversions of Carnival, and this setting would render the exorcist scene we discussed above quite harmless. One could even argue that when incorporated within these religious festivals and staged at a particular moment of the ecclesiastical calendar, drama itself became part of the liturgy or liturgical practice.

Conclusion

The relationship between religion and theology, on the one hand, and drama, on the other, is a complex one, situated both in religious matters (beliefs and practices) and in theological issues (ethics, doctrine, or dogmatics; and biblical exegesis and hermeneutics). Although the plays I have discussed were written by humanists who frequently expressed their contempt for medieval theology, they often remained within an exegetical framework defined by those earlier theologians. Moreover, we can find several instances of liturgical elements presented in the neo-Latin drama of the Low Countries, not least because some of these plays were written for Shrovetide and other significant moments in the ecclesiastical year. Thus, religion and neo-Latin drama were often closely connected, both in belief and in practice. We can see that over the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, currents of thought arising from the Reformation might have changed people’s ‘official’ religion, but that ‘old’ beliefs were more pertinacious than the humanists themselves would be ready to admit. The religious and political shifts during the second half of the sixteenth century, involving the process of confessionalization, were reflected in the plays, as we have seen: whereas the earliest neo-Latin humanist plays were not polemical, or were barely so, and no clear distinction existed between ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ plays, in later works the confessional differences become more clearly defined, and denomination-based polemic was much more overt, often conveyed by intertextual means as in the case of how Vernulaeus adapts Heinsius’ Protestant Auriacus to fashion his own Catholic Gorcomienses. As a consequence, throughout this period we can argue that the intricate relationship between religion, theology and drama, and between religion and politics, is mirrored – and in several instances shaped – by neo-Latin drama, in several distinct ways.

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