Reclaiming the “Sacred” from the “Profane”

K. Sarah-Jane Murray & Sinda K. Vanderpool Baylor University

In canto twelve of the Purgatorio, as Dante makes his way up Mount Purgatory in the company of Virgil, something amazing takes place. Bent over, his eyes cast downwards, the pilgrim takes in the spectacle of the Terrace of Pride, an immense sculpture in the rock, depicting characters from classical mythology (e.g., Niobe, Arachne, and Pallas Athena) alongside biblical fi gures (e.g., Nimrod, Saul, and Holofernes). While the rock carvings do not actually move, Dante is careful to note that they seem utterly lifelike: they fi le along below his feet like actors, whose stories serve as potent reminders of the fault which, according to Thomas Aquinas, causes the soul to “turn away from God” and thus marks “the beginning of all sin” (Summa Theologica, Second Part, Part I, question 84, article 2). As Dante observes the scene, the beauty and precision of the artwork overwhelms him: “What master of brush or pencil,” he asks, is responsible for such greatness? Suddenly conscious of his own inadequacies as an author—aware of his inability to convey in words the experience in which he participates—Dante is purged of pride and can now continue his upward climb, which, at every moment, brings him closer to the heavenly spheres. At fi rst, the connection of this passage from the Divine Comedy to the world of theatre may not be obvious. And yet, it is paramount to understanding the place the arts occupied in post-Augustinian medieval Europe. Canto twelve of the Purgatorio stands in sharp contrast to Plato’s critique of poets in the Republic, and also to Augustine’s harsh rebuke of theatre in the Confessions: it rehabilitates art as not only a valuable, but essential and meaningful, human experience. The sculptures in the rock, much like the Confessions themselves, “stir up” (Conf. 10.3.4) Dante’s passions. And yet, this arousal of the senses, far from deterring the soul from its “true path” (canto 1) propels it towards the ultimate end: “the vision of God in his essence” (Aquinas, Compendium of Theology, ch. 104). There is room, in Dante’s world—there is a need—for images that bring us closer to God. Dante’s poetic enterprise also brings to the forefront a pivotal tension with which medieval and Renaissance humanists found themselves constantly wrestling. Dante is a Christian poet; however, his guide through much of the (Christian) afterlife is Virgil— 7 8 K. Sarah-Jane Murray & Sinda Vanderpool arguably the greatest of pagan poets. Furthermore, the Terrace of Pride, which depicts both classical and biblical images, is itself a compendium of the “sacred” and the “profane.” And yet, all of the scenes turn the soul towards God. For example, pagan Arachne—who, more than confi dent in her artistic skills, challenges Athena to a weaving competition and ends up turned into a spider—yields an important lesson to the Christian: she warns us of the great dangers of pride and aids in Dante’s (and the reader’s own) purgation process. In medieval Europe, all is part of God’s world; all is understood in terms of God’s grand design for humanity. This example illustrates well the diffi culty faced by modern readers when they approach medieval or Renaissance theatre today. As we live in a (for the most part) secular world, where religion is frequently relegated to the churches (and, even then, primarily to Sunday mornings), how does the modern reader, actor, director, or audience member account for the “sacred” character of medieval and Renaissance theatre? Or, to offer a precise example taken up by one author in this volume, how can an atheist cast convey to its (possibly agnostic) audience the central meaning of the profoundly Catholic Digby Mary Magdalene play? To many of our contemporaries, the religious character of medieval and Renaissance theatre, whether rooted in Roman Catholicism or Reformation theology, appears utterly foreign, strange, and antiquated. Nonetheless, from across the centuries, it issues to us a worthy challenge: it pushes us to look beyond our “two-spheres” worldview—where we imagine that the “sacred” and the “profane” have little intersection—and to reconsider our very purpose as human beings. And, if we believe what these collective studies reveal, that is precisely the point. We need drama to collide into our everyday lives—to incite, awaken, and revive our senses—to the fact that the sacred is inextricably linked to our everyday, urbane experiences. It is in the laughter of a mocking wife, the pleas of a fervent believer, even the staged unbeliever. Modern spectators confront in medieval and Renaissance drama what contemporaneous audiences always knew: the inextricable link between the sacred and the profane. Our volume opens with Veronica Alfano’s study of teaching the sacred through comical and farcical means. Noah’s wife (Uxor) provides a very human, shrewd foil to Noah’s Godlike characteristics through her defi ant and witty remarks and actions. Uxor’s fl aws and eventual transformation reveal the playwright’s didactic competence, making the play more accessible to the audience and more effective at inciting them to acts of charity. Jerry Jaffe then considers how the author of The Murder of Abel reinvents the classical, Aristotelian idea of catharsis within the context of Augustine’s Christian worldview. Jaffe implies that, by observing the horrifi c murder of Cain’s brother, the audience is purged and cleansed of the desire to disobey God. Richard F. Hardin’s study of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine examines further the Christian catharsis that Jaffe’s piece posited. Hardin details the extent to which religious fear and “apocalyptic ferment” pervaded all aspects—political, rhetorical, and religious—of sixteenth-century England. Hardin highlights how Marlowe artfully combines rhetorical skill and religious knowledge to create a work that brings its audience through a terrifyingly moving experience. In the next article, John D. Martin studies the depiction of Jews in Nuremberg in Reclaiming the “Sacred” from the “Profane” 9 the plays of Hans Folz and Hans Sachs. Whereas Folz overtly denigrates the Jews, on the basis of their rejection of Christian Revelation, Sachs moves towards more modern, and “secularized,” anti-Jewish stereotypes, such as the Jewish banker or charlatan. Thus, the development of early German theatre—particularly in so far as it deals with the depiction of Jews—exhibits a fascinating tension between what one might refer to as “sacred” and “profane” forms of religious bigotry. Peter Cockett discusses the theoretical underpinnings of his contemporary production of the Digby Mary Magdalene. The article draws an especially interesting parallel between the process the actress playing Mary must undergo in order to “live” her role, and the transcendental experiences of medieval mystics. In the medieval mindset, to “play” Mary Magdalene is to know her, to experience all that she experiences, and thus, to come to know Christ in a different way. By watching and observing her—by participating in her ecstasy—the audience, too, comes to a better knowledge of God. Cockett raises interesting issues for contemporary productions of medieval theatre, such as the tension between the “sacred” nature of the text and its reenactment by “profane” (mostly atheist or agnostic) cast members. Through C. Thomas Ault’s presentation and analysis of select fi fteenth-century diaries, we become direct witnesses to the fl ourishing of Italian Renaissance theatre in Ferrara under the reign of Duke Ercole I. Like Stacey Connelly’s review of the mesmerizing yearly Via Crucis production in San Antonio and Peter Civetta’s review of Enders’s Death by Drama and Other Medieval Urban Legends so aptly describe, the line between “where theater ends and life begins” is nebulous. This lively fi fteenth-century town utterly blurs the distinction: shops, balconies, trees, and cathedral walls serve as backdrops to the spectacles. The exalted and earthly Duke serves as actor and momentarily becomes the least of all in a ritualistic washing of feet during Holy Week. When Renaissance and medieval theatre are brought to the modern stage, the sacred is being brought into our lives. To a great extent, the effect is jolting: it challenges us to reconsider ourselves, our highly-secularized world, and our assumptions regarding the relationship between the two. An early sixteenth-century poem, the Mirror of the Sinful Soul (1531-45) by Marguerite de Navarre, compellingly illustrates this phenomenon. Marguerite knew drama well, and she wrote many religious and secular plays. Furthermore, as sister to Francis I, the king responsible for ushering in the French Renaissance, she bridged many gaps between the ostensibly separate worlds of 1) Protestant and Catholic, 2) court and Church, and 3) male and female. Much like Dante’s Comedy, her Mirror tells and lives out the story of the soul’s purgative journey to salvation. The poem came under scrutiny by the faculty of theology (Sorbonne) in 1533 for its questionable theological grounds, revealing the mounting political and religious tensions that would eventually fuel the wars of religion later in the century. The opening lines of the Mirror are highly constructed to render a certain and harrowing effect on the reader. In a poem that promises to be a refl ection on the sinful soul, the resounding “where is Hell?” of the fi rst line shocks the reader in a manner not unlike the “hell, fi re, and brimstone” preachers of old: Where is Hell entirely full Of every misery, labor, pain and torment? Where is the pit of curses 10 K. Sarah-Jane Murray & Sinda Vanderpool From which emerges eternal despair? Is there no deep enough abyss of evil Suffi cient to punish the destitution Of my sins? (Vanderpool translation) Remarkably for a work inspired by the devotio moderna, Marguerite uses the ubi sunt trope in order to emphasize a notion as juxtaposed to “self” as one might conceptualize: a perilous “Hell.” Only after this initial shock does the poet set in motion the process of discovering simultaneously both self and her need for God. Then, her metaphysical questions gradually give way to fi rst-person confessional statements, as the reader is invited to live through the soul’s purgative experience. Whether through a shocking effect (found most readily in The Murder of Abel and Tamburlaine), artistic beauty (Digby Mary Magdalene), or the comic (Wakefi eld’s Play of Noah), drama aims to stir spectators. And, as St. Augustine knew well, spectators come to be stirred. Marguerite de Navarre moves her audience into a state of horror and shock akin to that experienced by Dante as he observes the punishment of the wretched souls in Hell. Like Dante, Marguerite seeks to arouse in her audience an inherent, and natural, need for God. But the arousal of the passions is not an end in and of itself: it drives us to experience caritas (charity), and to dwell closer to Him. For the Middle Ages and the Renaissance—unlike today—there is no need to reclaim the sacred from the profane: these two realms are so closely intertwined that they are, indeed, inseparable.

Works Consulted

Dante Alighieri. Purgatorio. Ed. & Trans. Charles Singleton. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.

Thomas Aquinas. The Compendium of Theology. Trans. Cyril Vollert. St. Louis: B. Herder, 1947.

- - -. “Summa Theologica.” Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Ed. Anton Charles Pegis. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.

St. Augustine. Confessions. Trans. F.J. Sheed, Introduction by Peter Brown, Ed. Michael P. Foley. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2006.

Marguerite de Navarre. Le Miroir de l’âme pécheresse. Ed. Joseph L. Allaire. Munich: Fink, 1972.