journal of jesuit studies 1 (2014) 419-442 brill.com/jjs Imitating Ovid to the Greater Glory of God Jesuit Poets and Christian Heroic Epistles (1514–1663) Jost Eickmeyer Universität Heidelberg [email protected] Abstract Between 1514 and 1663 the genre known as Heroides, coined by Ovid, was maintained almost entirely by modern Latin poets. This article considers this period, which has up to now remained almost unheeded in the history of the genre. It looks at the collec- tions of epistles by relevant authors (Eobanus Hessus, Andreas Alenus, Jacob Bider- mann, Balduinus Cabillavius, Jean Vincart, Jacob Balde) in their context within literary history and considers the various ends they served, with a focus on their representa- tions of Jesuit history and culture. Their relations to contemporary poetological dis- courses, represented for example by the Jesuit scholar Antonio Possevino, are addressed as well as their use of pictural media as in the case of Jean Vincart’s heroic epistles. Keywords early modern poetry – Jesuit poetry – European reception of Ovid – emblems When Ovid finished his Epistulae Heroidum between 25 and 16 BCE, he was probably well aware of having created a completely novel genre by blending established forms and contents.1 But he certainly did not imagine having * This article is a summary of the author’s Ph.D. dissertation defended at the University of Heidelberg and subsequently published: Jost Eickmeyer, Der jesuitische Heroidenbrief. Zur Christianisierung und Kontextualisierung einer antiken Gattung in der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2012). The author wishes to thank Miss Claire F. Mueller and Dr. Robert A. Maryks for their suggestions. 1 See, for example, Joseph Farrell, “Ovid’s Generic Transformations,” in A Companion to Ovid, ed. Peter E. Knox (Malden, MA/Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 370–380, esp. 379–80. See Jozef Ijsewijn and Dirk Sacré, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies. Part II, 2nd edition (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1998), 76–78. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/22141332-00103004Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:32:33PM via free access <UN> 420 Eickmeyer completed a piece of poetry that would be most cherished and expanded by Christian Humanists in early modern Germany and the Netherlands. Neither would most people have suspected the morally strict Society of Jesus to harbor poets with particular interest in Ovidian love elegies and their female “voices.” Since Late Antiquity, the eroticized and morally ambiguous depiction of some heroines had caused severe problems for Christian authorities as well as poets. Yet in later centuries, poets were no longer daunted by this fact: between 1514 and 1663, the genre of elegiac epistles imitating Ovid’s Heroides spawned about 300, mostly Latin, poems. Most of these poems were published during the last forty years of the period, in artistically elaborate and innovative collections exclusively composed by Catholic poets, most of them members of the Society of Jesus.2 Replacing the Heroines: Helius Eobanus Hessus and Andreas Alenus While in medieval times few noteworthy contributions to classical heroic epistolography were put forward,3 its renaissance was to come in the times and realms of German Humanism and its aftermath.4 A key figure in the “Christianization” of the genre was Eoban Koch, who followed the learned fashion of his time by Latinizing his name to Helius Eobanus Hessus (1488– 1540). After studying in Erfurt, the young man found employment in eastern Prussia, studied law, and composed his first remarkable poetical works, among them twenty-four elegies he called Heroidum Christianarum Epistulae [Letters of Christian Heroines], a title which underlines the intention of emulating Ovid’s Heroides.5 This first major work was printed in Leipzig in 1514 and was widely acclaimed by Eoban’s contemporaries who even went so far as to praise 2 An important but solitary exception is the Heroum Helvetiorum epistolae (1657) by the Swiss poet Johannes Barzaeus (c.1592–1660). He was a priest, though not a Jesuit. But he had stud- ied at the Jesuit university in Dillingen. He is mentioned in Ijsewijn and Sacré, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies, 207. 3 See, however, three examples of medieval heroic epistolography by two Latin poets: Venantius Fortunatus (Eickmeyer, Heroidenbrief, 57–69) and Baudri of Bourgueil (ibid., 69–91). 4 See Wilhelm Kühlmann, “Neo-Latin Literature in Early Modern Germany,” in Camden House History of German Literature, vol. 4: Early Modern German Literature 1350–1700, ed. Max Reinhart (Rochester: Camden House, 2007), 281–329. 5 For general information on Eoban’s life, see Erich Kleineidam, “Eobanus,” in Contemporaries of Erasmus, ed. Peter G. Biesterholz and Thomas B. Deutscher (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), vol. 1, 434a–436a. journal of jesuitDownloaded studies from 1 Brill.com09/28/2021 (2014) 419-442 01:32:33PM via free access <UN> Imitating Ovid To The Greater Glory Of God 421 him as the “German Ovid” in the years following the publication. As his friend and biographer Joachim Camerarius puts it: At that time Eoban wrote some other [poems] and imitated Ovid by writ- ing Heroides, which he later reworked himself purging them from the more futile stories, thereby improving the whole and making it more serious. It is his first memorable work and particularly remarkable because it shows Eoban’s poetical strength rising as an example of his talent; the more so, since the composition did not take much effort from his side […].6 I will later return to this “reworking” and “improvement” Camerarius men- tions, but first a closer look on this book of Christian heroines is necessary. In his preface to the 1514 edition, Eoban addresses his employer, the Pomesanian bishop Hiob von Dobeneck, displaying some self-esteem: What moved me in particular to write heroic epistles was the realization that none of our poets thus far had bothered with this material to any extent. Frankly, I was shocked to see all the choicest talent squandered on certain profane and frivolous subjects.7 It was not only his addressee’s clerical background that urged Eoban to renounce all “profane and frivolous subjects.”8 In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, the literary community was shaken by scandals with reper- cussions across Europe: Michael Marullus had published his Hymni Naturales (1497), poems addressing pagan gods and carefully omitting all signs and top- ics of Christian piety, and had been widely deprecated for it.9 In Germany, the “arch-poet” Conrad Celtis wrote an impeccable Sapphic ode to Apollo and by doing so brought the wrath of the Vienna clergy on his patrons.10 The license 6 Here quoted from Joachim Camerarius, Narratio de Helio Eobano Hesso. Comprehendens mentionem de compluribus illius aetatis doctis & eruditis viris (1553), ed. Georg Burkard and Wilhelm Kühlmann, trans. Georg Burkard (Heidelberg: Manutius, 2003), 50. English translation of my own. 7 The Poetic Works of Eobanus Hessus, ed., trans., and ann. Harry Vredeveld, vol. 2: Journeyman Years, 1509–1514 (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008), 135. 8 On Hiob von Dobeneck and Hessus at his court, see Vredevld’s introduction, ibid., 103–106. 9 See Walther Ludwig, Antike Götter und christlicher Glaube. Die Hymni naturales von Marullo (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), esp. 5–13: the harsh critique of Marullus’s contemporaries and the church. 10 See Eckart Schäfer, Deutscher Horaz. Conrad Celtis, Georg Fabricius, Paul Melissus, Jacob Balde (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1976), 23. journal of jesuit studies 1 (2014) 419-442 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:32:33PM via free access <UN> 422 Eickmeyer to dwell in the poetic, philosophical, and religious realms of antiquity, exten- sively applied by Italian Renaissance poets in their circles, seemed to have expired. After the turn of the century a poet knew himself to be closely watched by the church authorities. Eobanus Hessus was well aware of these literary and theological discussions. In the preface to his heroic letters, he expressly rejects Marullus and allies himself with the other “wing” of the Italian Renaissance: Christian Humanists, namely Macarius Muzius, who (in prefaces to his epic poem De triumpho Christi, 1499) had presented a distinct poetics of Christian poetry in classical form, stating that Holy Scripture should be the basis and main source for every modern poet.11 But Eoban did not entirely stick to this prescription when he replaced Ovid’s pagan heroines, queens, and princesses by women from the Christian tradi- tion. In fact only the Virgin Mary (Epist. 1, 2, 16) and Mary Magdalene (3) could be traced to the Book of Books; the twenty other letters presented holy women from legendary sources, some with a long academic tradition (St. Catherine of Alexandria, Epist. 4), some with remarkably miraculous details (St. Ursula, Epist. 17). Still, the author could rightfully claim to “have written nothing at odds with our holy religion,” since he connects some of his heroines’ letters with important theological issues: the letter Emmanuel to Mary, for example, with the Annunciation; Mary Magdalene to Christ, with the Resurrection; and Pelagia to Nonius, with disdain for the world.12 One small example taken from Eoban’s Heroides Christianae may show how sophisticatedly he manages to imitate Ovid, and at the same time to transform his pagan heroines into Christian saints. The first epistle may be the least plausible in terms of the situation in which it was written, since it is Jesus him- self who—some time before his birth—addresses Mary in what can only be called a letter “attached to the Annunciation.”13 Obviously the secrets of Trinitarianism are at stake here. This and the following poem (Mary’s answer to Emmanuel) allude to Ovid’s three “double epistles,” which normally concluded an edition of the Heroides.