Abstract
The analysis of Emanuele Tesauro’s Ermegildo and Sforza Pallavicino’s Ermenegildo, both Jesuit priests, is couched within a critical analysis of Italian theatre in the seventeenth century. Unlike Spaniards of the same period who felt free to experiment with form and content, Italian dramatists aimed at aligning their works with the neo-Aristotelian tradition and reform it according to precepts of decorum and verisimilitude. Tesauro’s main concern is not the theological implications of Hermenegildo as a saint, but rather his capacity to serve as a new kind of modern protagonist who often appears utterly disengaged from the devotional level of the narrative. Pallavicino is more concerned with creating a new Italian tragedy than with the holy lessons of Christian martyrdom. Tesauro’s and Pallavicino’s dramas showcase the variations of the Hermenegildo trope within the Society of Jesus and debunk the common belief that Jesuit drama is formulaic and univocal.
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Notes
- 1.
“L’attività teatrale e l’impegno letterario e teatrale italiano oscillano invece, nei loro punti estremi e divergenti, fra un teatro ridotto a pura tecnica dello spettacolo e un teatro come tradizione letteraria, imitazione e ricordo classicistico.… Splendido di fama europea, presente ovunque, efficace di suggestioni e generoso di doni a tutta Europa, il teatro italiano sembra tuttavia incapace di esprimersi e di concretarsi in opere del valore di quelle del teatro straniero.” (“Both the Italian theatrical activity and its literary and theatrical output move between two extreme and divergent points, a theatre reduced to sheer technique and spectacle, and a theatre understood as literary tradition, imitative and reminiscent of the classicism.… Splendid with its European fame, omnipresent, effective with its suggestions, and generously lavishing its presents all over Europe, Italian theatre appears incapable to express itself and produce valuable works such as those of foreign theatre.” Claudio Varese, “Teatro, prosa, poesia,” in Il Seicento. Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vol. 5, ed. Emilio Cecchi and Natalino Sapegno (Milano: Garzanti Editore, 1988), 551.
- 2.
Maurice Slawinski, “The Seventeenth-Century Stage,” in History of the Italian Theatre, ed. Joseph Farrell and Paolo Puppa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 128.
- 3.
“As the linear descendant of the humanist-inspired drama of the sixteenth century, it might be termed ‘literary’ theatre, but is perhaps better described by ‘academic,’ since its natural location was the academy, that peculiarly literary Italian and social club which brought together the lay and ecclesiastical magnates of the locality, the lesser nobility and their client intellectuals (lawyers, doctors, teachers, priests).” Ibid., 129.
- 4.
Mario Apollonio, Storia del teatro italiano. Dall’età barocca al Novecento (Milano: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 2003), 258.
- 5.
Marvin Carlson, Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey, from the Greeks to the Present (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 38.
- 6.
The commentaries, translations, and interpretations of Aristotle’s Poetics are numerous and of unequal literary quality. Some of the major intellectuals who wrote about the topic are Giorgio Valla (1498), Marco Girolamo Vida (1527), Giovan Giorgio Trissino (1529), Bernardino Daniello (1536), Alessandro de’ Pazzi (1536), Girolamo Fracastoro (1540), Lelio Gregorio Giraldi (1545), Vincenzo Maggi (1546), Francesco Robortello (1548), Pietro Vettori (1548), Bernardo Segni (1549), Vincenzo Maggi (1550), Giacomo Mantino (1550), Antonio Maria de’ Conti (1550), Girolamo Muzio (1551), Giovan Battista Giraldi Cinzio (1554), Alessandro Lionardi (1554), Giovambattista Pigna (1554), Antonio Sebastiano Minturno (1559 and 1564), Scipione Ammirato (1560), Bernardo Tasso (1562), Bartolomeo Maranta (1563), Alessandro Piccolomini (1572), and Torquato Tasso (1587). For a detailed account of the debates surrounding the tragic genre, check Paola Mastrocola, L’idea del tragico: Teorie della tragedia nel Cinquecento (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore, 1998).
- 7.
While discussing the issue of pleasure brought about from the change of fortune of the tragic hero, Castelvetro states that “once we have duly examined them we shall see how little Aristotle understands the nature of tragic pleasure.” Andrew Bongiorno, ed., Castelvetro on the Art of Poetry. An Abridged Translation of Lodovico Castelvetro’s Poetica d’Aristotele Vulgarizzata et Sposta (Binghamton: Library of Congress, 1894), 164.
- 8.
“I valori della memoria, della continuità e della tradizione si incrinano: l’antico cessa di essere un valore di per sé, mentre il moderno acquista, in quanto tale, un significato positivo. Nondimeno non si giunge quasi mai a quello che sarà il particolare e diffuso rifiuto illuministico: il confronto col passato è complesso e in qualche modo inquieto; la novità può consistere nella novità del rapporto con gli antichi.” (“The values associated with memory, continuity and tradition crack. The ‘old’ stops being a value in and out of itself, while the ‘modern’ gains a positive connotation solely for being such. Nevertheless, there is never the break with the past that characterizes the Enlightenment. The confrontation with the past is complex and somewhat uneasy; the novelty may well consist in the novelty of the relationship with the old values.”) Claudio Varese, Scena, linguaggio e ideologia dal Seicento al Settecento. Dal romanzo libertino al Metastasio (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1985), 8–9.
- 9.
Apollonio, 269.
- 10.
“During the seventeenth century, the interest in education and spectacle, in liturgy, predication, and Quaranta Ore ceremonies led to the progressive abandonment of Latin and to the adoption and experimentation with secular dramatic forms such as pastoral. Musical drama, comedy of characters, and even allegorical ballet were introduced in the Jesuit college, but always under the controlling frame of the literary form and moral content. It was a theatre that espoused the intellectual and moral responsibilities that were neglected in the ‘performative theatre’ of the time.” Clelia Falletti Cruciani, Il teatro in Italia. Il Cinquecento e Seicento (Rome: Edizioni Studium, 1999), 320.
- 11.
Slawinski, 129.
- 12.
“Bernardino Stefonio (1560–1620) attempted an important reform with his 1597 Crispus, a tragedy in trimeters and choruses, modelled on Seneca’s Fedra. Stefonio wanted to give classical and regular structure to Jesuitical drama by the respect of the unities, the reduction of the number of characters, the suppression of allegories, personifications, spectacular representations of battle scenes, as well as the music during the acts. Starting with Stefonio, who will follow a different path in his 1600 Flavia, one can see a recurrent oscillation between the theatrical mode of representation and the regular one, which confined the marvelous effects to the intermezzi.” Silvio D’Amico, ed., Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, Vol. V (Rome: Unedi, 1975), 1162.
- 13.
Apollonio, 269.
- 14.
Tesauro explains his choice to name his hero Ermegildo instead of Ermenegildo, which would be the Italian equivalent of the Spanish Hermenegildo, by noting that phonetically the Spaniards would pronounce the name that way.
- 15.
Pierantonio Frare, Retorica e verità: le tragedie di Emanuele Tesauro (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1998), 8.
- 16.
Emanuele Tesauro, Il libero arbitrio, in Emanuele Tesauro: Scritti, ed. Maria Luisa Doglio (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2004).
- 17.
For a detailed account of the work Tesauro did for Philip III’s funeral celebrations, see Giovanna Zanlonghi, “Lo sguardo del prudente: Emanuele Tesauro e la morte di Filippo III (1621),” in Teatri di formazione: Actio, parola e immagine nella scena gesuitica del Sei-Settecento a Milano (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2002).
- 18.
Frare, 41.
- 19.
Gianfranco Damiano, “Drammaturgia e spettacolo al collegio milanese di Brera. Dalle origini all’Hermenegildus di Emanuele Tesauro,” in M. Chiabò and F. Doglio, ed., 343.
- 20.
Frare, 47.
- 21.
H. Carrington Lancaster, “La Claprenède Dramatist. II,” Modern Philology 18, No. 7 (Nov., 1920), 350–351.
- 22.
Tesauro felt strongly the urge to defend Italian literary achievements against its detractors, and this led him often to vitriolic diatribe against intellectuals who attacked his country. An example of Tesauro’s bent for litigiousness is his short libel L’Italia vindicata which was directed against Pierre Le Moyne, a French Jesuit who had criticized Italy and Tesauro’s own Cannocchiale aristotelico in his 1666 De l’Art des Devices. Tesauro expresses his irritation at the French priest also in a letter dated September 9, 1666, addressed to Father Giovan Michele Graneri. See Emanuele Tesauro, L’Italia vindicata. Maria Luisa Doglio, 97–103. Tesauro’s letter can also be found in Doglio’s anthology (147–150).
- 23.
Tesauro, Ermegildo, 28.
- 24.
“If a seditious man infringes arrogantly the cult of Arius, he will teach the value of piety to the others by paying with his own blood.” Ibid., 34.
- 25.
“As for your piety I have received the right to my Catholic name and Roman rite, as well as to keep my faith to the Roman Pastor among my people in private, I swear on your imperious sword (the sword of a excellent king is a lighting on earth just like that of God is in heaven) not to break the word I gave you as a subject to his king, a son to my father, and man to God. If anybody because of my action will abandon the laws that Arius gave us, I am to suffer the fire and cruel sword as punishment for my faults.” Ibid., 52.
- 26.
“The court is the sea; gluttons are the fishermen; Faith is the fishing rod; hope is the string; love is the hook; words are the bait.”
- 27.
“There you will recover until the same God who made you a believer will also make you stronger. So that even the thought of death will look appealing to you.” Ibid., 101.
- 28.
Ibid, 153.
- 29.
Ibid., 160.
- 30.
Stefano Verdino, Le tragedie italiane del Tesauro in AA.VV, Da Carlo Emanuele I a Vittorio Amedeo II. Atti del convegno nazionale di studi (Alessandria, 1997), 125; Gianfranco Damiano, Il teatro gesuitico a Milano nei secoli XVI e seventeenth: il collegio di Brera e la tragedia di Emanuele Tesauro, doctoral dissertation (Milan: Università Cattolica, 1993), 69. Both sources are cited in Frare, 48.
- 31.
“nell’Ermegildo lo sbilanciamento degli assi concettuale e retorico-strutturale verso la linea che possiamo definire di ‘mistione meravigliosa’ risponde ad un coerente sviluppo dell’esperienza teorica e letteraria tesauriana, concretizzatasi in quella grande summa dell’ ‘Oratoria e Poetica Elocutione’ sub specie dell’ ‘Argutezza’ costituita dal Cannocchiale aristotelico.” (“in Ermegildo the leaning of both the conceptual axis and the structural and rhetorical axis toward the notion of the ‘marvelous mix’ corresponds to the coherent development of Tesauro’s theoretic and literary experience, which had led to the great accomplishment of ‘Oratory and Poetic Elocution’ and ‘Wit’ represented by the Cannocchiale aristotelico.”) Mauro Sarnelli, Emanuele Tesauro dall’Hermenegildus (1621) all’Ermegildo (1661). Paola Andrioli, Giuseppe Antonio Camerino, Gino Rizzo, and Paolo Viti, ed., Teatro, scena, rappresentazione dal Quattrocento al Settecento. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi (Lecce, 15–17 maggio 1997) (Galatina: Congedo Editore, 2000), 277.
- 32.
Robert E. Proctor, “Emanuele Tesauro: A Theory of the Conceit,” MLN 88, No. 1, The Italian Issue (Jan. 1973): 68–94; 85–86.
- 33.
Verdino, 127.
- 34.
“Cristina’s limited victory ensured the orderly succession of the dynasty. The French, already esconded at Pinerolo 40 miles to the southwest, remained in the city until 1645, and in the citadel until 1657, effectively hobbling the duchy. Nonetheless, Cristina and Carlo Emanuele II staged an impressive ceremonial reentry into Turin in 1645.” Susan Claiber, book review of Turin, 1564–1680: Urban Design, Military Culture, and the Creation of the Absolutist Capital, by Martha D. Pollak, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 52, No. 1. (Mar., 1993), 102.
- 35.
“As a matter of fact, a French princess of Catholic faith and very similar to our queen for the purity of her soul was the one who stole away her husband from Arianistic heresy to restore him to the true faith, and made known the catholic name in Spain among those Goth kings that were fierce persecutors of the Church.” Emanuele Tesauro, Ermegildo, Pierantonio Frare and Michele Gazich, ed. (Rome: Vecchiarelli Editore, 2002), 3.
- 36.
“To be performed by noble personages on the birthday of Our Highness the queen as a very proper and glorious subject for her royal blood.” Ibid., 3.
- 37.
Slawinski, 140–141.
- 38.
“Thus he places it in the very heart of the institutions (family, religion, the state) which coalesce in the character of the monarch.” Damiano, “Drammaturgia e spettacolo,” 345.
- 39.
“[They] go around every cave and every bush sniffing and eavesdropping, attentively hearing and smelling everything, and they bark at every branch that moves.” Tesauro, Ermegildo, 77.
- 40.
Ibid., 19.
- 41.
Ibid., 18.
- 42.
CONSUL: The law prescribes the punishments.
KING: But it is the right of the kings to limit them.
CONSUL: Why limit them, when the rule is clear?
KING: The king is above the common rules.
CONSUL: Religion sits above the king.
KING: Does the Council forbid me from being merciful?
CONSUL: A rushed clemency is dangerous.
KING: This is an injury that touches me deeply.
CONSUL: It touches God even more.
KING: If the king can condemn, he can also condone.
CONSUL: It is up to God to pardon the offences against God.
KING: It is up to God to punish the offences against God.
Ibid., 147–148.
- 43.
Ibid., 161.
- 44.
“You lie when you say that Recaredo abandoned Arianism to embrace Catholicism because of my advices. I swore, if you intend clearly my oath, to suffer willingly martyrdom in case I had convinced my brother to leave the Arianistic error. God is witness I did not do that.” Tesauro, Ermegildo, 145.
- 45.
“Ermegildo stages the problematic relationship between the being and the word, between the ontological, the linguistic, and the dramatic present in the relationship between truth and falsity.” Ibid, xlvi–xlvii.
- 46.
Ibid., 162.
- 47.
“In order to placate Heaven, I will consume my eyes with tears within four walls until they are no more.” Ibid., 183.
- 48.
“And I swear that my tears were real when I was going around crying, even you though you thought they were faked.” Ibid., 164.
- 49.
“Jesuits’ poetic treatises consider the clash between the martyr and the tyrant as the nucleus of purgation, and catharsis. Fear and pity are substituted by other tenets, such as the hatred toward the opposite faith, represented by the tyrant and bloody king, as well as the faith in the catholic religion, which is heightened and made strong by the personal abnegation with which the martyr faces death.” R. Mercuri, “La Reina di Scozia di Federico della Valle e la forma della tragedia gesuita,” Calibano 4 (1979): 151.
- 50.
Frare and Gazich, xxxiii.
- 51.
Tesauro, Ermegildo, xxxiv.
- 52.
Sarnelli, 268.
- 53.
Ibid., 269.
- 54.
“Con il Tesauro, grazie alla consapevolezza teorica del problema della verità connesso all’esistenza stessa del linguaggio, possiamo mettere a fuoco questo tema e tentare di comprendere la funzione che la retorica gioca in questo genere testuale.” (“Thanks to Tesauro’s theoretical understanding that the problem of truth is connected to the very existence of speech, the researcher can try to focus this topic and comprehend the function rhetoric plays in this textual genre.”) Zanlonghi, 49.
- 55.
Benedetta Craveri, “La retorica? Bisogna rivalutarla,” La Repubblica, 27 giugno 2000. This article contains an interview with Ezio Raimondi, one of Italy’s leading experts on the literature of the seventeenth century.
- 56.
Lope de Vega, Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo, 139. In Daniel Gerould (ed.), Theatre, Theory, Theatre: The Major Critical Texts from Aristotle and Zeami to Soyinka and Havel (New York: Applause, 2000), 135–145.
- 57.
Frare and Gazich notice how Tesauro allows the chorus to partake in the dialogue with other characters only once, in act V, where the chorus engages in a conversation with Ermegildo. Frare and Gazich, ix.
- 58.
Ibid, x.
- 59.
Ibid., x-xi.
- 60.
Tesauro had been inspired by Seneca to the point of writing his own version of the story of Oedipus and Phaedra. His tragedies Edipo and Phaedra are strongly indebted to the style of the Latin dramatist.
- 61.
Frare and Gazich, xii.
- 62.
“Tesauro’s theatre is a feast of music and words, it erases the edifying plot of the terrible fight between father and son, as well as the martyrdom for the faith, and it explodes in continuous word plays, verbal wit and artificial images.” Franca Angelini, Il teatro barocco (Rome-Bari: Editori Laterza, 1993), 207–208.y
- 63.
Frare, 47. See also Jean-Marie Valentin, Le theater des Jésuites dans les pays de langue allemande (1554–1680) (Bern Frankfurt: Lang, 1978), 883–887.
- 64.
Affò Ireneo, Memorie della vita e degli studi del cardinale Sforza Pallavicino (Parma: 1794), 7.
- 65.
John O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 48.
- 66.
“Nè il Chigi salito a tanta altezza, si mostrò dimentico, cioé indegno di tale amico; anzi gli diede sí efficaci e pubblici segni di benevolenza, che tutta la corte rivolse gli occhi al gesuita, come ad arbitro di quel pontificato.” (“Raised to such position, Chigi never forgot or proved unworthy of his friend, and he gave him effective and public signs of his benevolence to the point that the entire court looked upon the Jesuit [Sforza Pallavicino]as the arbiter of that Pontificate.” Sforza Pallavicino, Discorso premesso all’Arte della Perfezione Cristiana di Pietro Giordani (Milano: 1820), 15.
- 67.
Bruna Filippi, “Il teatro al Collegio Romano: dal testo drammatico al contesto scenico,” I Gesuiti e i Primordi del Teatro barocco in Europa, 174.
- 68.
D’Amico, 1162.
- 69.
“There was a grand funereal monument designed by Andrea Sacchi in the middle [of the church] which was dedicated to all the benefactors of the order.” Silvia Carandini, Teatro e spettacolo nel Seicento (Roma: Bulzoni Editore), 62.
- 70.
For a detailed account of the ceremonies, see Giacinto Gigli, Diario Romano, 1608–1670, in Mecenati e pittori: Studio sui rapporti tra arte e società italiana nell’età barocca, Giuseppe Rcciotti, ed. (Roma: Tuminelli Editore, 1958).
- 71.
Ernesto Rinaldi, La fondazione del Collegio Romano (Arezzo: Cooperativa Tipografica, 1914).
- 72.
“They decided to stage not only the nobility and the number of disciplines that were taught in the college, but also the students that received their education here. By selecting the most illustrious graduates of this colony given to the family of Saint Ignatius, they celebrated also all the other colleges wher they now teach to the studious youth all the faculties convenient to their use…therefore they honored the memory of those who were conspicuous for the eminence of their status.” Sforza Pallavicino, Relazione scritta ad un amico delle feste celebrate nel Collegio Romano della Compagnia di Gesù, per l’anno centesimo dopo la fondazione di essa, 18.
- 73.
Bruna Filippi, “The Theatre of Emblems: Rhetoric and the Jesuit Stage,” Diogenes (1996): 44, 67. I used the online version of this article, which can be found at http://dio.sagepub.com
- 74.
“A perfumed rain of flowers fell, the air was pregnant with festive and mellifluous sounds and singing. It was comparable to enjoying a crumb of the pure joys reserved to the fortunate souls of Heaven.” Sforza Pallavicino, Relazione scritta ad un amico, 32.
- 75.
Carandini, 62–64.
- 76.
Sforza Pallavicino, Descrizione del primo viaggio fatto dalla Regina di Svezia Cristina Maria, convertita alla religione cattolica e delle accoglienze quivi avute sino alla sua partenza (Roma: Tipografia Salviucci, 1838).
- 77.
“Mentre l’autore preparava per le stampe un tomo da lui composto sopra la Filosofia Morale, nella cui lezione lo impiegano ora i suoi Superiori, fu persuaso da un suo antico, e riverito maestro di spendere alcuni giorni, che gli rimanevano disoccupati, nello scrivere un tragedia. Egli accettò l’impresa, ed in minor tempo d’un mese la trasse a fine.” (“While the author was in the process of publishing his book on moral philosophy, which is the subject his superiors have assigned him to teach, an old and much loved teacher of his persuaded him to spend a few days he had available to write a tragedy. He accepted the task and finished it in less than a month.”) Sforza Pallavicino, Ermenegildo martire, 134.
- 78.
“Your safety is dry to all hopes. The only wife you will se is the ax. The guilty man cannot expect grace when he has refused the offer in the past.” Pallavicino, Ermenegildo martire, 64.
- 79.
“Fly, he told me, and in my name command that the last order I gave over Ermenegildo and his life be not executed, and that instead what I ordered before be done. For the urgency of the matter I send you instead of a written message.” Ibid., 112.
- 80.
Some of these poetical compositions are Il dialogo tra la pace ela Guerra nel giorno della creazione di N.S. Papa Urbano VIII, nel principio dell’anno V, the Canzone per Giovanni Ciampoli, the Poesia nell’ottavo anniversario dell’essaltazione al Pontificato di Papa Urbano VIII al 6 Agosto 1629, Canzone in morte di Serenissima Caterina, principessa di Toscana, duchessa di Mantova, and finally Ode in lode del Principe Don Mattia de’Medici. All these works can be found in the manuscript 2121 at the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome, Italy.
- 81.
Laura Volpe, Le idée estetiche del cardinale Sforza Pallavicino (Castelvetrano, 1930), 5–7.
- 82.
Sforza Pallavicino, Del Bene, in Biblioteca Enciclopedica Italiana, vol. XXXIII (Milan: 1834), 525.
- 83.
Ibid.
- 84.
Ibid., 526.
- 85.
“Nevertheless, the first apprehension has worth and carries some degree of pleasure. Do we not see it in the poetical compositions? Every age, sex, and class of people feel the pleasure of the fairytales and the fascination of the stage.” Ibid., 527.
- 86.
Benedetto Croce, Estetica (Bari: Laterza, 1922) cited in L. Volpe, 11.
- 87.
“Let’s suppose that each one of us would be faced by this choice: either know everything with mistakes or not know anything and live buried in a deep sleep. What decision would we make? I would surely choose the first and I believe everybody would agree with me because the error would be more advantageous of the mere lack of error.” Pallavicino, Del Bene, 525.
- 88.
“Tragoediarum et Comoediarum, quas non nisi latinas acrarissima oportet, argumentum sacrum sit ac pium: neque quidquam actibus interponatur, quod non latinum sit ac decorum: neque persona ulla muliebris vel habitus introducatur.” D’Amico, 1159–1160.
- 89.
William Hugh McCabe, An Introduction to the Jesuit Theatre, ed. Louis J. Oldani. (St Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1993), 180.
- 90.
Ibid., 183.
- 91.
G. B. Castiglione, Sentimenti di Carlo Borromeo intorno agli spettacoli (Bergamo: Lancellotti, 1759).
- 92.
McCabe, 183.
- 93.
“Besides that, as the rules of his order forbade him from introducing female characters with female clothes, the author has structured the plot in such a way that appeared to be a choice what was in reality a prohibition.”) Pallavicino, Ermenegildo martire, 163.
- 94.
Gualtiero Gnerchi, Il teatro dei Gesuiti nei suoi primordi a Roma (Rome: Officina Poligrafica, 1907).
- 95.
“A pretext to tell the great love story between David and Jonathan, which is explicitly presented as exemplary of a virtuous and formative sentimental bond.” Luana Salvarani, “Venegas e gli altri. Il teatro nella prassi pedagogica gesuitica del Cinquecento,” Educazione, Giornale di Pedagogia Critica I, No.1 (2012): 54–55.
- 96.
Luana Salvarani, “La didattica delle passioni. Peculiarità e paradossi del teatro gesuita delle origini.” Studi sulla formazione 1 (2014): 209. See also Luana Salvarani, “Saul Gelboaeus di Miguel Venegas, drammaturgo gesuita.” CulturaGay.it (20 maggio 2014): http://www.culturagay.it/documento/41
- 97.
“I don’t believe that there has ever been such friendship such as the one between my heart and Ermenegildo’s. Our hearts are always in agreement except on the issue of who loves the other the most. In this disagreement, I was wiser because I loved what is more worth loving. His love was even more welcomed because he loved me, not this fragile appearance that is not me but merely an image of me. My hair, which people claimed was knitted with sunbeams, was not me. I cut it and I am still myself.… Only the soul is the same and it was a sign of the affection of my husband. The soul will stay after the years would have dyed my hair of unattractive silver, and the wrinkles would have plowed my thin face, and death would have turned me in ashes and worms in the dark tomb. Only this love lasts forever, because it is a love the loves the immortal.” Pallavicino, Ermenegildo martire, 44–45.
- 98.
“She, whose sublime virtue is the true image of heaven, brought to me the light of heaven.… It remained in the soul only one human affection that seemed celestial to while I loved the woman whose hand led me to Christ.” Ibid., 49, 55.
- 99.
Donna Spivey Ellington, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul: Understanding Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Washington, D.C.: The catholic University of America Press, 2001), 186–187.
- 100.
“Amici, io non da voi danno, e offesa, / Anzi la vera libertà ricevo: / Che non dai muri sol di questa torre, / Ma dal carcere più stretto e più penoso / Mi fate uscir, con l’impennarmi l’ali, / Ond’io voli a regnar sovra le stelle…Sì giovevole offesa io vi perdono. / Anzi prego quell Dio, che col suo sangue / La salute comprò di chi lo sparse, / Ch’oggi il mio sangue, a chi lo sparge impetri / I rai de la salute, e quella fede, / In cui difesa di versarlo io godo. / O ben tre volte avventurato sangue, / S’a l’errante reina, al padre mio, / Et al caro german gli occhi risana, e fa veder il sol del Paradiso, / Ch’Oriente a l’Esperia aprir si degni. ” (“Friends, I do not receive from you any damage or offence but the real freedom. Not only do you free me from the walls of this tower but also from the smallest and most miserable prison, that of the soul, so that I fly away to govern over the stars…I forgive you such pleasurable offence. As a matter of fact, I pray to God, who bought with his own blood the one who now offer their lives in martyrdom, that my blood may bring the rays of health and the faith for which I am happy to offer it. My blood will be three times fortunate if it heals the eyes of the queen, my father and my brother so that they may see the sun of heaven opening from the east to the west.”) Pallavicino, Ermenegildo martire, 121–122.
- 101.
“Cerulea nube tempestata d’oro / De l’alma pari al sol era la vesta: / Tolti all’aurora i crini havea la testa / Incoronata d’immortale alloro; / Alloro che smaltato era in vermiglio / Da gocciole d’ogn’ostro assai più belle: / Per gemme il seno havea croce di stelle: / Splendea letizia e maestà nel ciglio: / Spirava intorno odor così gentile, / Come d’Ambrocio il più fiorito Aprile. Eran rubini e perle i labri ardenti, / Onde uscì l’armonia di questi accenti.” (“His garment was a cerulean cloud studded of gold comparable to the sun. His head like the hair of the dawn was crowned with immortal laurel, enameled in red drops that were more beautiful than all other colors. His chest presented a cross of stars as precious stones, and one could see majesty and happiness in his eyes. All around him there was the gentle scent of ambrosia one can smell in the most flowery April. His lips were rubies and pearls from which the harmony of these words came out.”) Ibid., 131.
- 102.
“Even though a veil of faked sorrow spread briefly over the king’s face when the French messenger was present, soon that veil fell being torn apart by the rays reverberating from his internal joy: unfortunate rays where one could see again the rekindled fire of his hatred.” Ibid., 90.
- 103.
“Sforza Pallavicino’s Ermenegildo, staged in Rome around the mid 1600s by the students of the college, holds a particular significance in the history of Jesuit theatre, because in the midst of tragedies and tragicomedies overflowing with spectacular scenes and without unities of time and place, it represents an attempt at creating regular drama.” Francesco Colagrosso, Saverio Bettinelli e il teatro gesuitico (Florence: Sansoni, 1901), ix.
- 104.
Jesuit dramatist Federico della Valla uses the same dramaturgical strategy in his La Reina di Scozia, certainly one of the best examples of martyr tragedy in Italy. In this case the death of Queen Mary Stuart is narrated by a witness, who was present at the execution.
- 105.
Pallavicino, Ermenegildo martire, 114.
- 106.
Ibid, 137.
- 107.
“Therefore, it is allowed to pleasure the sight with marvel during the intermezzi or in other ways, if the organizers accept the additional work and expenses. It is acceptable to introduce in the middle of the action the opening of palaces, gardens, as well as Heaven and Hell (in cases where it is acceptable to address miracles) and other similar displays which do not defy verisimilitude, as I have explained earlier…” Ibid, 136–137.
- 108.
“il soggetto istesso dell’opera è dovuto a lei per due capi. Il primo è per havere il suo santissimo zio accresciuti gli onori di questo santo con le chiavi di Pietro, e celebrate le sue lodi sull’arpa di David. Il secondo è, perché Vostra Eminenza ben consapevole di quel gran documento platonico commentato da Aristotele, che la prima cura de’ governanti vuol essere l’avvezzare i popoli a dilettarsi dell’onesto, ha spesso con magnifica santità consagrate la pompa, e la dilettazion delle scene alla povertà, ed alla sofferenza eroica de’ santi. E così V.E.…. ha voluto pascere il mondo con facelle nudrite di puro, e non immondo liquore.” (“the very subject of the tragedy is due to Our Eminence for two reasons. The first is that you holy uncle has raised the honors of this saint with the key of Peter, and he has celebrated his praises on the harp of David. The second reason is that Our Eminence, aware of that platonic document Aristotle commented that discusses how the first concern of the rulers is to teach people to take pleasure in honest activities, often used with magnificent sanctity the lavishness and entertainments of the stage for the poverty and heroic sufferings of the saints. By doing this, Your Eminence…expressed his desire to nourish the world with words full of pure and not foul liquor.”) Ibid, 7.
- 109.
The choruses in Ermenegildo martire are lyrical commentaries to what happen in each act finale. They are the author’s pensive and moral reflection on the stories of the play, and never give information about past or future events. Their titles are “Giovamenti dell Concordia,” “Nocumenti del Sospetto,” “Beni della Speranza,” and “Mali che apporta l’avidità di regnare.”
- 110.
“It would happen what happens sometimes to buildings: that what apparently looked like ornament, when it is removed, it shows with great damage that it was a pillar.” Ibid., 164.
- 111.
“il mirabile non verisimile né ha difficoltà in ritrovarsi, né reca piacere, se non forse di riso in udirsi, né merita il nome di poesia, perché non è imitazione del vero: là dove il verisimile, benché non ammirabile, ha tutte queste prerogative.” (“The marvelous that is not verisimilar is of a common nature, and it is not pleasurable except for being laughable, because it does not imitate the truth. On the other hand, the verisimilitude has all these qualities in spite of the fact that is not admirable.” Ibid., 151.
- 112.
Franco Croce, Tre momenti del Barocco letterario italiano (Firenze: Sansoni, 1966), 167.
- 113.
Brendan Dooley, ed. and trans. Italy in the Baroque: Selected Readings (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995), 488.
- 114.
Pallavicino, Ermenegildo martire, 159.
- 115.
“Just as I argued earlier that the poet makes marvelous events, that are inherently unbelievable, appear verisimilar by using contextualizing circumstances, in the same way the poet also makes verisimilar the marvelous language that is in its nature not verisimilar…This verisimilitude is constructed with measured verses, when they are formed with such deliberateness that their number appears almost casually, as if the speaker found the words by chance while trying to express his ideas, so that the result is a proper and careful expression…as long as the rhyme comes out of words so necessary and appropriate that they appear to fulfill any other need but rhyming. It is easier to achieve this natural effect when rhymes are not used consistently but with great freedom…as the author has done.” Ibid., 159–160.
- 116.
Pallavicino’s centrality to the aesthetical debates of the seventeenth century has been underlined by all the scholars who have studied his work. Among the many, it is worth mentioning Giovanni Alfredo Cesareo, Storia delle teorie estetiche in Italia (Bologna, 1924); Ciro Trabalza, La critica letteraria (Milan: Vallardi Editore, 1915); Franco Croce, Tre momenti del barocco letterario italiano (Florence: Sansoni, 1966); and Giuseppe Toffanin, L’eredità del Rinascimento in Arcadia (Bologna, 1923).
- 117.
The literary impact of Marino on Italian literature of the seventeenth century can hardly be overstated. His style became fashionable and spurred hordes of imitators who only occasionally reached the sophistication of their model. Eugenio Donato describes Marino’s work “as the highly metaphorical expression of highly sensual material – each of these terms being carried to such an extreme as to leave no doubt about its being treated as an end in itself. The poet never really attempted to explain the theoretical implications of his poetical aims.” Eugenio Donato, “Tesauro’s Poetics: Through the Looking Glass” MLN 78, No. 1, Italian Issue (Jan., 1963): 15.
- 118.
Franco Croce, 163.
- 119.
“Ed ho ripreso coloro come schiavi poco onorevoli di Aristotele, che apprezzano i detti suoi per la fama dell’autore, e non più tosto l’autore per la fama dei suoi detti…Anzi soglio dire che più conosce il merito di Aristotele chi tal’ora il rifiuta, che chi per tutto lo segue…Io siccome disprezzo per ignoranti i dispregiatori di Aristotele, così riverisco per sapienti coloro, che conoscendo ‘eccellenza della sua dottrina, sanno anche farsi giudici né temerari, né pusillanimi de’ suoi errori.” (“I have reproached as dishonorable slaves of Aristotle those who appreciate his words for the notoriety of the man instead of appreciating the man for the notoriety of his words…I want to say that the person who sometimes rejects Aristotle knows him more that the person who follows him in everything.… As I reckon ignorant those who despise Aristotle, by the same token I revere as wise those who, knowing the excellence of his doctrine can be sensible and daring judges of his mistakes.”) This Lettera del 27 Ottobre 1646 is contained in the manuscript 2121 at the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome, Italy.
- 120.
“It will nullify both the original and autonomous traits of interpretation and the creation of a composite and diverse theatre that had sustained the successes of Tucci, Benci, and Stefonio.” Daniela Quarta, “Drammaturgia gesuita nel Collegio Romano: dalla tragedia di soggetto biblico al drama martiriologico (1560–1644),” in I Gesuiti e i Primordi del Teatro Barocco in Europa, 160.
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Muneroni, S. (2017). Hermenegildo in Italy: The Search for the Exemplary Jesuit Tragedy. In: Hermenegildo and the Jesuits. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55089-3_5
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