In flesh and bone: bodily image and educational patterns in early Reformation theatre

Abstract

From its very beginning, the Protestant Reformation adopted the theatre as one of its educational tools. Together with choral music, visual arts, and preaching, Luther, Melanchthon, Oekolampad, and other Reformers promoted both the cultivated school theatre and the popular street theatre in order to spread the new faith, create a community ethos, enhance knowledge of the Bible, and raise contempt towards the common enemy, the Roman clergy. The body was, like in all performances, a cornerstone of its educational action. Drawing on both traditions, the classical and the popular one, the Reformers were able to build a “site-specific” theatrical pedagogy of the body in which the individual body of the hero and the collective body of the community acted in different roles, and in which the city, with its political and religious identity, was rethought as the place where the Volksgeist came to life and the glorious histories of the Bible were revived by and for the “chosen ones”. Focusing on early Swiss playwrights and a fugitive Italian writer, the analysis will trace the features of a stage repertory often neglected by history of education, and pinpoint some still open questions.

Keywords:

• Reformation
• community theatre
• Niklaus Manuel
• Sixt Birck
• pedagogy of the body

Notes

¹ “It is not a new thing nowadays / That sacred things are brought on scene, / and often with laughter.”

² Glenn Ehrstine, “The True Cross in Kunzelsau: Devotional Relics and the ‘Absent’ Crucifixion Scene of the Kunzelsau Corpus Christi Play,” in Power and Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Theater, ed. C. Dietl, C. Schanz and G. Ehrstine (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 73.

³ Cora Dietl, “Neo-Latin Humanist and Protestant Drama in Germany,” in Neo-Latin Drama in Early Modern Europe, ed. Jan Bloemendal and Howard B. Norland (Brill: Leiden-Boston, 2013), 132.

⁴ Jennifer Waldron, Reformations of the Body: Idolatry, Sacrifice, and Early Modern Theater (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 2.

⁵ The reference work about Reformed theatre in Bern is Glenn Ehrstine, Theater, Culture and Community in Reformation Bern, 1523–1555 (Brill: Leiden, 2002).

⁶ The passage is quoted by Judith Pfeiffer and is explained as follows: “In this context, the term respublica christiana designates a certain ideal of a Christian community as discussed in the city of Basel and elsewhere during the Protestant Reformation. By pursuing the formation of a respublica christiana, the Reformer of Basel, Johannes Oekolampad, aimed at guiding a demoralised community to a moral reformation based on the Bible, a so-called regnum Christi. Oekolampad described the features of a real Christian community in the preface of his commentary on the prophet Iesaia (In Iesaiam Prophetam Hypomnematō) which he dedicated to the magistrate of Basel in 1525. The reformer was convinced that faith has to take shape within the realm of ethics.” “The Changing Function of Swiss Reformation Drama as Relates to Language and Mockery,” in Dietl, Schanz, and Ehrstine, Power and Violence, 177.

⁷ “Da kumpt es, das man die passion ßo vill stund vorzeugt, weyß gott, ab es mehr zum schlaffen ader zum wachen erdacht ist. In dieße rote gehenn auch die, die erlernet, wie große fruchte die heylige meße habe, und yhrer eynfeltigkeit nach achten sie gnug, wie sie die messe hören, da hyn man uns furet durcht etlicher lerer spruch, das die messe opere operati, non opere operantis, […], so doch die messe nit umb yhr selbs wirdickeyt, sondernn unß zuwirdigen ist eyn gesetzt, ßonderlich umb des leydens Christi willen zu bedencken.” “Eyn Sermon vor der Betrachtung des heyligen leydens Christi,” in Martin Luthers Werke, vol. 2, 136–7, quoted by Ehrstine, Theater, Culture and Community in Reformation Bern, 23.

⁸ Ibid., 17–18.

⁹ Sixt Birck, Ivdith: Ain Nutzliche History (Augsburg, s.e., 1539), “Vorrede diser Tragoedi”, lines 23–7, 35–8.

¹⁰ Classical texts and neo-Latin dramas, especially in schools, were often read as “semi-dramatic dialogues”. Dietl, “Neo-Latin Drama in Germany,” 106–15.

¹¹ Aelius Donatus, “De comoedia,” in Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kaibel (Berlin: Weidmann, 1899), 67.

¹² Pfeiffer, “Swiss Reformation Drama,” 179–81.

¹³ Ibid., 176.

¹⁴ Ehrstine, “True Cross in Kunzelsau,” 79.

¹⁵ The renowned (and very controversial) early Jesuit playwright Miguel Venegas draw heavily on the male body, its beauty, and its moral implications, depicting the virtuous love between the biblical heroes David and Jonathan in his college drama Saul Gelboaeus. A similar, but even more sophisticated, pedagogy of the body was later implied in another masterpiece of Jesuit educational theatre, Bernardino Stefonio’s Crispus. See Luana Salvarani, “La didattica delle passioni. Peculiarità e paradossi del teatro gesuita delle origini,” Studi sulla formazione 17, no. 1 (2014): 203–18.

¹⁶ Tragoedia nova Pammachius, autore Thoma Naogeorgo Straubingensi. Cum praefatione luculenta (Vitebergae 1538), “Interlocutores”. See also Id., Tragoedia nova Mercator seu iudicium, in qua in Conspectum Ponuntur Apostolica & Papistica doctrina, quantum utraque in conscientiae certamine valeat & efficiet, quid utriusque & futurus sit exitus (Basel, 1540).

¹⁷ Benjamin Griffin, “The Birth of the History Play: Saint, Sacrifice, and Reformation,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 39, no. 2 (1999): 221.

¹⁸ The Munchkalb, according to widely circulating popular tradition, was a deformed calf born in Freiburg with strange features and something like a monk’s cap hanging from the neck. A pamphlet printed in Wittenberg in 1523 under the names of Luther and Melanchthon (Deuttung der zwo grewlichen figuren Bapstesels zu Rom und Munchkalbs zu freyberg in Meyssen funden) depicted the semi-legendary animal, together with the even more legendary Papstesel (another monstrous beast born in Rome), as a symbol of the physical and moral deformity of Roman clergy and religious orders. Both the figures were widely reproduced in anti-Catholic engravings.

¹⁹ Manuel was an excellent painter and engraver (his Berner Totentanz marks the beginning of this art genre); his satirical plays were part of his activity as politician and campaigner of the Reformation in Bern. He also sketched some of the characters of his plays, often allegories portrayed with a very popular, lively style. See the catalogue of the 1979 Bern exhibition: Cäsar Menz, Hugo Wagner, eds., Niklaus Manuel Deutsch: Maler, Dichter, Staatsmann (Bern: Kunstmuseum Bern, 1979).

²⁰ Birck, Ivdith, cap. 12.

²¹ Pfeiffer, “Swiss Reformation Drama,” 170.

²² Waldron, Reformations of the Body, 13.

²³ Ibid., 79.

²⁴ Niklaus Manuel, Ein Fastnachtspyl vom Bapst und seiner Priesterschafft [Ein Faßnacht spyl, so zů Bern uff der Herren Faßnacht in dem M.D.XXII. jar, von burgers sünen offentlich gemacht ist, Darinn die warheyt in schimpffs weyß vom Babst u. siner priesterschafft gemeldet wirt] (Bern?, after 1522). The original edition has no reference numbers; the passage is at page 43 of the 1836 Bern edition.

²⁵ Francesco Negri, Tragedia intitolata Libero Arbitrio, ed. Cristiano Casalini and Luana Salvarani (Roma: Anicia, 2014), 121.