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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 collections 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.

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 studied 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.

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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 writing 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 topics 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.

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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 tradition. 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 himself 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. By changing the order and choosing a morally unas- sailable writer, Eoban stresses his Christian revision of the classical text but

11 Hessus, Poetic Works, 136–139; see Vredeveld’s notes to the translation; for Muzius’s poetics see Carl P.E. Springer, “Macarius Mutius’ De Triumpho Christi: Christian Epic Theory and Practice in the Late Quattrocento,” in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Torontonensis. Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, ed. Alexander Dalzell, Charles Fantazzi and Richard J. Schoeck (Binghampton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991), 739–746. 12 Quotation and paraphrase from Hessus, Poetic Works, 139. 13 Hessus, Poetic Works, 158–171.

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Imitating Ovid To The Greater Glory Of God 423 simultaneously recalls his model. This intertextual “rivalry” stays present throughout the letter. The reader is given hints right from the beginning: “Quam legis, aeternam rebus paritura salutem, / Non est mortali littera facta manu.”14 By the playing on the meaning of the Latin word “salus” (meaning “health” as well as “salvation”), which was also conventionally used as greeting formula in ancient letters, and by means of the explicit reference to the “hand” that wrote it, Eoban subtly combines two Ovidian poems. Paris opens his letter to Helena: “Hanc tibi Priamides mitto, Ledaea, salutem, / quae tribui sola te mihi dante potest.”15 And Oenone addresses Paris using the words: “Perlegis? An coniunx porhibet nova? perlege – Non est / ista Mycenaea littera facta manu.”16 There is more to this combination than the conventional use of classical phrasing: If Hessus replaces the rather sleazy “salus,” Paris wants to gain from Helena by “eternal salvation,” i.e., Christ himself, he marks the difference between paganism and Christianity and at the same time renounces illicit love (like Paris’s) as a possible subject of his poetry. The second verse cunningly reflects the consequences of Paris’s deeds, since Paris fears to be persecuted by Helena’s father Menelaus and has to be calmed by his former lover. Again, the effect Hessus achieves in his rendering is based on contrast. It is true that Mary also fears and trembles at the sight of Jesus’s letter, as the following verses show.17 But whereas Oenone unconsciously predicts the revenge of the Greek kings that will ultimately lead to Paris’s death and the destruction of his family and city, Jesus announces his incarnation, thus the redemption of all humanity.18 This one example must suffice here, since we have to turn to the later reworking and “improving” of Eoban’s Epistulae as mentioned by Camerarius.

14 Ibid., 158, vv. 1f.: “The letter you are reading, O you who are about to bring eternal salvation into the world, this letter was not written by a mortal hand.” On greeting formulas in Hessus’s epistles see Andrzej Budzisz, “Helius Eobanuns Hessus’ Heroides as an example of Renaissance religious elegy,” in Ad litteras. Latin Studies in Honour of J.H. Brouwers, ed. Arpád Peter Orbán and Marc G.M. van der Poel (Nijmegen: Nijmegen University Press, 2001), 273–281. 15 Quoted from Ovid, Heroides. Amores, trans. Grant Showerman (Cambridge: Loeb, 2002), 196; in the translation of Showerman/Goold (ibid., 197): “I, son of Priamus, send you, Leda’s daughter, this wish for welfare—welfare that can fall to me through your gift alone.” 16 Ibid., 56, trans. 57: “Will you read my letter through? Or does your new wife forbid? Read—this is no letter writ by Mycenaean hand!” 17 Hessus, Poetic Works, 159 (vv. 3f.): “Do not be afraid, Virgin, favorite of Heaven. The mes- senger before whom you tremble is no menace to you.” 18 Hessus’s Emmanuel fervently stresses this consequence (ibid., 161, vv. 25f.): “I am going to enjoy them [i.e., the embraces of the Virgin Mary] and at long last redeem the wretched world that I commanded to be a home, as it were, to exiled humanity.”

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424 Eickmeyer

In the 1520s, Hessus joined Martin Luther and his Reformation. Interestingly enough, he proclaimed this new confession in a heroic epistle, published in 1523, in which he presents an allegorical figure of the church as a writer, who implores Luther to free her from the chains of papacy.19 Nine years later, when Eoban worked on the second edition of his Heroides Christianae, he had to adapt them to the new form of Christianity he was now involved in. And the changes he made were substantial. Besides reduction and smaller changes, he gave a new structure to the previously unsorted elegies, a structure determined by truth.20 In the new verse preface dedicated to a new patron, the capitular of Bamberg and Würzburg Paul von Schwarzenberg, Eoban explains why he so greatly diverged from his Ovidian model:

The dress circle is filled with those [heroines] who are attested by the word of the gospel. The upper circle bears true and false ones mixed. The third circle is (as they say) the place for all the false ones.21

Now embracing the Lutheran privileging of the biblical text (sola Scriptura), Hessus operates with the evaluatory metaphor of theatre seats. The best places are reserved for the heroines of biblical origin, the less respectable category for the “mixed” ones—for example, Thecla, the author of a letter to St. Paul, since only Paul is attested by the gospel. In the least respected places remain the entirely legendary couples, like St. Catherine and Christ or St. Mary of Egypt and Zosimas. Alcyone (correspondent of St. George in the 1514 edition) and the infamous St. Ursula do not seem to be allowed to enter this “theatre” at all, since their letters are omitted.22 Indeed Hessus tried to stand up for his legendary women by stating that, fabulous as their writing was, it was at least probable.23

19 Eobanus Hessus, Ecclesiae Afflictae Epistola ad Lutherum (Haguenau, n. p., 1523). The text was inserted into later editions of Eoban’s Heroides; see Hessus, Poetic Works, 124. 20 In the first two poems, for example, it is not Jesus but God the Father who writes and receives a letter. 21 The 1532 edition was published with a German translation: Eobanus Hessus, Dichtungen. Lateinisch und Deutsch, ed. Harry Vredeveld, vol. 3: Dichtungen der Jahre 1528–1537 (Bern: Lang, 1990), here the preface, 272–279, quoted 274, vv. 53–56; English transla- tions are my own. 22 Dörrie allows a quick overview of the two different structures in Der heroische Brief (Berlin de Gruyter, 1968), 370–372, although he quite contestably claims that Hessus made “but smaller changes” in the texts themselves (371). 23 See the following verses in Hessus, Dichtungen, vv. 57f.: “Non ita falsa tamen nequeant ut vera videri / Veraque si quaedam dempseris esse queant” [But still not as false as if they could not seem the truth / and even could be true, if you only take something away].

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Imitating Ovid To The Greater Glory Of God 425

By and large, however, the Lutheran emphasis on the Bible as the only warrant of truth would determine the poetry of not only Hessus himself, but of every poet in the Protestant regions of the Holy Roman Empire until the eighteenth century. Catholic poets, however, could (and did, as we shall see) use the full scope of hagiography and church history as topics for their works. After Eobanus Hessus had laid the foundations for Christian Heroides, still about sixty years would have to pass until someone else took up the baton. Andreas Alenus (1510–1578) was related to John Allen, archbishop of Dublin, a friend of Wolsey and Thomas More. His father fled to the Catholic Netherlands, where Andreas attended Leuven University and later worked as a professor of Latin and Greek in Herk and Hasselt.24 As a scholar of some local reputation, the Sacrarum Heroidum libri tres [Three Books of Holy Heroines] remain his only major work, “major” also in terms of extent. The collection contains sev- enty-seven epistles presenting biblical, legendary, historical, and allegorical subjects in chronological order, from Eve writing to Cain to an allegory of the soul assuring his former mate, the body, of an early reunion in eternity.25 This work is worth studying not only because of its sometimes remote subjects, but also, and particularly, because it acts as a kind of intermediary between early Humanist and Baroque Jesuit Heroides. Of special interest from this point of view are Alenus’s allegorical epistles. The soul’s letter to the body precedes a cycle of mere allegorical heroic epistles that Jacob Balde published in 1663 (see below).26 The other, even more influen- tial specimen is Alenus’s epistle Ecclesia Militans Ecclesiae Triumphanti.27 Pope Paul III’s famous bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae, by which he approved the newly founded Society of Jesus,28 comes to mind—and justifiably so. Alenus

24 Research on Alenus is so far confined to three unpublished dissertations written at the K.U. Leuven and the important articles by Willy D.F. Alenus: Bijdrage tot de Geschiedenis van de Familie Alenus van Herk-de-Stad. Uitgegeven ter gelegenheid van het Wendelinus- jaar 1580–1980 en van het Millennium van het Prinsbisdom Luik 980–1980 (Herk-de-Stad: Mikron, 1979), 8, 28–41; and Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de familie Alenus van Herk-de- Stad (1500–1700) (Oostende: Eigen Uitgave “Samizdat,” 2006), 10–18. 25 Andreas Alenus, Sacrarum Heroidum libri tres. In quibus praeter alia plurima, quæ ad intel- ligendas Veteris & Noui Testamenti historias, & pietatis incrementum conferunt; studiosæ iuuentuti vtilia, scitúque dignissima continentur (Leuven: Rutger Velpius, 1574). See Dörrie, Der heroische Brief, 386–388; Eickmeyer, Heroidenbrief, 204–214. 26 Alenus, Sacrarum Heroidum, 147r–148v (III, 30). 27 Ibid., 142v–145r (III, 28). 28 See John W. O’Malley and Gauvin Alexander Bailey, eds., The Jesuits and the Arts 1540–1773 (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2005), 5. Ignatius uses the term himself, for example for the last part of rules collected in his Spiritual Exercises. See Exerc. Spir. 1969, [352–370].

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426 Eickmeyer himself was not a Jesuit, but the scenes Church Militant describes in the letter to her “sister” highlight the clash of confessions, especially in the “German” ter- ritories, where Ignatius and his companions were so determined to succeed.29 In the first parts of her letter, Church Militant gives an overview of the dangers and threats she had to endure since her “husband,” Christ, has left her, naming, for instance, Arius and Mohammed. Martin Luther, “well acquainted with the Devil,” led the second attack against her.30 But Ecclesia does not simply give les- sons in church history; she finds herself in the middle of all that turmoil. Suddenly a vivid scene of iconoclasm, with plundering and rioting hordes, is evoked:

How many sacred temples have I seen perish by their hands! How many treasures did they rob that only to have touched would have been a profa- nation! They dared violate Vestalian Virgins and to expel pious monks form their dwellings.31

Every epistle in Alenus’s book is signed with its fictitious place and date of writing. Quite appropriately, Church Militant writes “from the World, 1566.”32 Precisely in that year Professor Alenus had to leave his home in Hasselt due to uprisings led by Calvinist preachers and local rioters. The masses rushed into St. Quintus church and destroyed artifacts; monasteries and convents in Hasselt and its surroundings were also attacked. It may very well be the author’s own experiences that inspired these lines, if not the entire poem. And if Church Militant ends her letter by stressing her persistence and endurance until God will reward her toils and labors with a laurel wreath, one can only imagine Alenus’s hopes and sorrows when he left his home by night. Beyond these autobiographical traces, Alenus’s epistle marks the beginning of the most productive time for this genre. Before, there were single heroic epistles that dealt with current political or religious issues, like Eoban’s letter Ecclesiae Afflictae ad Lutherum. But Alenus combines all former traditions into one collection that is thus capable to incorporate biblical, historical, theological, and current religious themes and issues in various degrees. It is this, of all qualities, that famous Jesuit poets of the following century will be acutely aware of and use in their copious Baroque poetry.

29 See John W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 1993), 272–283. 30 Alenus, Sacrarum Heroides, 143r, vv. 23f. (Arius) and 25f. (Mohammed); 144r, vv. 65–68, quote v. 67 (Luther). 31 Ibid., 144r, vv. 59–62. 32 Ibid., 145r.

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Imitating Ovid To The Greater Glory Of God 427

Mapping the Whole of Christianity: Jacob Bidermann’s Heroic Epistles

Although we cannot be entirely sure if Alenus or the Saxonian Baroque poet Paul Fleming (whose famous Epistula Germaniae Exulis contributed to the genre) knew the works of their respective predecessors and explicitly tried to imitate and emulate them, this knowledge must be presumed for the Jesuit poets of the seventeenth century.33 The strictly organized and hugely success- ful schooling system implemented by the Society of Jesus throughout the world included detailed knowledge of Latin (less Greek) literature, which in the more advanced classes in Jesuit colleges even had to be used as a template for the pupils’ own writing.34 That “Latin literature” comprised not only the classical texts recommended by the Humanist tradition, but also Christian poetry from late Antiquity and the Middle Ages as well as contemporary works, can be gathered from one of the most important compendia written on behalf of early modern education, Antonio Possevino’s copious Bibliotheca selecta de ratione studiorum (1593).35 The renowned diplomat and scholar from Mantua devotes the whole seventeenth book of his Library to poetry and painting (De Poesi et Pictura) and gives strict advice on how to write Christian Latin poetry by imitating the right sources and on how not to fall prey to pagan imagery or heretical concepts.36 These almost eighty pages in folio show close adherence to post-Tridentine aesthetics but also rely on Humanist and Renaissance authorities. Macareus Muzius, Eoban’s main poetic example, is named and repeatedly quoted.37 More importantly, when it comes to classical elegies, Possevino warns his readers that elegiac “language and content most often are inappropriate for Christian ears and hearts.”38 Hence he recommends

33 On Fleming, see Eickmeyer, Heroidenbrief, 145–150. 34 On the development of the Jesuit school system see O’Malley, First Jesuits, 200–242; Aldo Scaglione, The Liberal Arts and the Jesuit College System (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1986), among others. 35 On this work see Albano Biondi, “La Bibliotheca Selecta di Antonio Possevino. Un pro- getto di egemonia culturale,” in La “Ratio Studiorum.” Modelli culturali e pratiche educative dei Gesuiti in Italia tra Cinque e Seicento, ed. Gian Paolo Brizzi (Rome: Bulzoni, 1981), 43–75; Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer, “Antonio Possevino’s Bibliotheca selecta. Knowledge as a weapon,” in I gesuiti e la ratio studiorum, ed. Manfred Hinz, Roberto Righi and Danilo Zardin (Rome: Bulzoni, 2004), 315–355. 36 Antonio Possevino, Bibliotheca selecta de ratione studiorum […]. 3rd edition. 2 vols. (Cologne: Gymnich, 1607), vol. 2, 408–484; see Biondi, “La Bibliotheca Selecta,” 67–74. 37 Possevino, Bibliotheca selecta, vol. 2, 461–570. 38 Ibid., 449.

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428 Eickmeyer replacing the mostly obscene classical material with decent Christian elegies which stay close to their examples in terms of form and style, but differ from them in terms of content. As appropriate material Possevino names, among others, the death of Christ, the martyrdom of saints, a Christian soul thirsting for God—transpositions that obviously had already been put into practice by Eobanus and Alenus.39 Possevino’s concise definition of the purpose of this poetry is new and attests to a specifically Jesuit poetics. This purpose results from the highly affective speech of elegiac poetry (and heroic epistolography): “There lies a great opportunity for the lovers of God to add [to elegiac poetry] an adequate moral education and to make the souls incline to what they desire and hope for the most.”40 It is this educational, even “psychagogical” function of literature that would shape the Society’s poets and their poetry for the next 150 years at least; and not to its disadvantage, since this guideline made it possible for Jesuits to write some of the most ingenious and inventive verses of the Baroque era. Among the Jesuits—all highly trained in Latin verse—Possevino’s advice would find open ears and eager pens. The first and probably most important Jesuit author of Heroides Christianae was Jacob Bidermann. Pupil of the famous Bavarian scholar Matthäus Rader, Bidermann gained some reputation as a playwright in Augsburg and Munich before he turned to elaborate epigrams and epic poems. In 1625, he was appointed censor of the Society in Rome, where he wrote three books of epistles by Christian heroes (Heroum Epistulae, Antwerp 1630) and three complementary books of letters by Christian heroines (Heroidum Epistulae, 1638).41 Both collections were frequently reprinted, often together with others of Bidermann’s work. Its high acclaim throughout Germany is underlined by a German translation from 1704, one of the overall very few contemporary bilingual editions of Jesuit Latin poetry.42 The first striking difference with regard to Bidermann’s predecessors is the “sex splitting” in the two books: Whereas most of the heroic epistles in Ovidian tradition present female writers, the Jesuit opens the genre to male writers as well, a change with important consequences. Moreover, Bidermann differs from Eoban or Alenus in terms of composition. The twenty epistles of his Heroes are divided into three books,43 but the order is neither determined

39 Ibid., 450. 40 Ibid. 41 See Yasmin Haskell, “The Vineyard of Verse,” Journal of Jesuit Studies 1, no. 1 (2014): 26–46, here 31f. 42 See the entry in DHCJ. 43 For an overview of the Heroum Epistulae see Dörrie, Der heroische Brief, 390.

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Imitating Ovid To The Greater Glory Of God 429 by truthfulness (like in Eoban) nor by chronology (like in Alenus). Instead, the first book assembles Saints Alexius, Jerome, Augustine, Valerius, and Theophilus side by side with the New Testament’s rich man (Luke 16, 19–31), all of them writing about the “four last things” [hominis novissima]. The second book is entitled “Private Calamities” and focuses on the virtue of constancy. Saints Eustache, Ambrose, and John Chrysostom either show their own steadfastness or strongly appeal to their addressees to cultivate this virtue (e.g., Ambrose to Emperor Theodosius). The rest of the second book marks an important change from biblical and ecclesiastical to secular history. The last of the Hohenstaufen, Konradin, and Emanuel Sosa, a Portuguese merchant who is shipwrecked in a storm, display constancy in the face of death. A special bond, taken from Byzantine history, connects the fourth and fifth poem of the second book. First, the Vandal king Gelimer reflects on his vain aspirations to conquer Africa and pleads to the Byzantine general Belisarius for mercy. Then, the same Belisarius, far from being victorious like in the previous epistle, but blinded by the emperor, reflects on the vanity of human luck and all earthly things. To be sure, these subjects had already been treated in other poetical works. The one thing that provides innovation here is Bidermann’s technique of subsuming examples from church history and secular historiography under issues of theological importance. This tendency becomes even clearer in the third book, where poems “of mixed matters” are presented. From the prodigal son (Luke 15, 11–32) to St. Thomas Aquinas, from St. Alypius’s letter to St. Augustine to Emperor Charles V, from St. Peter to Nivardus, the brother of St. Bernhard, all writers confess their Christian faith in the light of a personal lapse. One of the most interesting poems appears to be the sixth, the letter from Charles V to no other than Francisco de Borja. In this very artful as well as suggestive poem, Bidermann makes some use of the application of senses, crucial to Jesuit theories on meditation and art, not least to Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises themselves.44 At the same time he combines ecclesiastical and secular history on a new level. Charles V has just resigned all of his worldly power to lead a Christian life in his retreat near Yuste in Extremadura. This historic “scandal” is explained through parallel imagery. Just like Francisco de Borja is said to have discovered the vanity of all human ambitions when he meditated on the corpse of Empress Isabella, Charles himself does the same by unmasking his “beloved” empire as nothing more than a corpse:

44 See Hugo Rahner, S.J., “The Application of the Senses,” in Ignatius the Theologian, trans. Michael Barry (London: Chapman, 1968), 181–213.

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430 Eickmeyer

Just like the QUEEN’S hideous and discolored countenance terrified your face, not less terrified was I by the unfamiliar face of the EMPIRE at that moment, when I beheld the pale dead simulacrum of my EMPIRE.45

Charles goes on to reflect on how he—as a youth—was blinded by the “female” beauty of the empire, but how the continuous wars, particularly in France (against Francis I) and Germany opened his eyes to the truth. World history and Jesuit history are carefully intertwined in the letter’s writer and his addressee—the praise of the Christian emperor who resigned all his power and glory to lead a monastic life in contrition mirrors the praise of the Duke of Gandía who resigned his life as a courtier to become one of the most important members of the early Society of Jesus, later even its superior general. Appropriately Charles V closes his letter with yet another parallel between the two “enlightened” men, and a kind of prophecy:

But you, Francis (who is beckoned by the stars and their treasures just like me), you shall feel sympathy for my labors. May it be that your action will find LEADERS [dukes] to imitate it. And maybe some KINGS will follow in my path. Oh, how much I desire this for the better of kings!46

Eight years after the letters of Christian heroes, Bidermann completed his Ovidian cycle publishing his Heroides Christianae. In the preface, the poet claims to have waited such a long time in order to not disturb the effect of his Heroes’ Letters. As for the content of the Christian Heroines, the reader instantly notices that Bidermann carefully avoids any repetition not only of his Humanist predecessors but also of his own earlier work. Notably, there are no characters taken from the Old Testament in the Heroum Epistulae, whereas two out of three books of his new work exclusively present women from the Old Testament. In addition, he tends to build sequences of letters written by the same character. The first three letters are authored by Eve, in which she describes the Garden of Eden to her son Abel (I, 1). Then she blames Cain for murdering his brother (I, 2) and finally addresses the whole of mankind, blam- ing herself for original sin and describing the wasteland outside of Eden (I, 3). The following three poems in the first book and six poems in the second book

45 Jakob Bidermann, S.J., Heroum Epistolae: ad Romanum exemplar recusae (Munich: Leysser, 1634), 133–134, vv. 51–54. 46 Ibid., 136, vv. 133–138. Indeed, some Spanish noblemen followed Borja’s example and dedicated their souls and wealth to the newly founded Society. “In Spain,” O’Malley writes, “the Jesuits were accused of parading Borja around ‘like a trophy’” (First Jesuits, 72).

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Imitating Ovid To The Greater Glory Of God 431 stay close to the chronology of the Old Testament, from a Tyrean queen writing to her grandchildren about the Great Flood to Esther who reports Haman’s death to Mordecai; from the Eritrean Sibyl to the mother of the Maccabees.47 As rich as this collection proves to be, and as interesting as it is in terms of its poetic value and its frequent typological foreshadowing of the New Testament, Bidermann’s most important innovation on the genre can be found in the third book of the epistles.48 It comprises only four, rather extensive letters, but these are exclusively written by allegories of the church. The author picks up where Alenus left off, but now covers the whole communion of the saints. Two voluminous letters from Church Militant to Church Triumphant are followed by a response in which the latter describes the joys of heaven. The fourth letter comes straight out of purgatory where Church Penitent evokes the suffering in the flames of purification. In a way Bidermann echoes his first book of Christian heroes, where the rich man wrote about the flames of hell and St. Augustine imagined the beauty of the heavenly realm. But by choosing merely allegorical figures as writers and addressees, he transfers the evocation of last things from individual “experience” to universal principles of the Catholic world. Most intriguing in this context are the first two epistles. Over 400 verses are dedicated to the persecutions, oppressions, and heretical afflictions of the church (militant) from the times of early Christendom until Bidermann’s present. In this respect Bidermann follows Alenus’s Ecclesia epistle quite closely, but his historical and theological foundations are slightly different. As a learned Jesuit he draws the picture of a persecuted church against the background of the Revelation of St. John. In a short introduction in prose—common in the Heroides, while the poems of heroes had no introductions at all—Bidermann names his sources for the following poem, thereby giving hints regarding how to interpret them properly. Apart from classical authors like Tacitus, he obviously draws on the huge Historia Ecclesiastica compiled by the Oratorian Cesare Baronio (1538–1607), but as first sources he gives the twelfth and thir- teenth chapter of the Revelation of John and a commentary to this biblical book written by a fellow Jesuit from Portugal, Luis del Alcázar (1554–1613).49

47 An overview can be found in Dörrie, Der heroische Brief, 392. 48 For a detailed interpretation of Bidermann’s letter from Judith to Jojakim (II, 4) see Eickmeyer, Heroidenbrief, 587–612. 49 Bidermann, Heroidum Epistolae, 108. Alcázar’s work is casually touched in Kenneth G.C. Newport, Apocalypse and Millennium. Studies in Biblical Eisegesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 71f. For the author himself see DHCJ 1: 40–41.

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The concentration on this specific theological work is by no means incidental. The quarrel about the correct interpretation of the Revelation had become fierce since the early Reformation: Luther himself, John Calvin, and other Protestant theologians did not hesitate to identify the Antichrist (i.e. the “false prophet” in Apoc. 16 and 19–20) with the pope and the Whore of Babylon (Apoc. 17–18) with Rome.50 Conversely, theologians and pamphletists loyal to the old church read the book of Revelation as pointing towards their reformed enemies.51 This point of view, which was held by Catholic writers from Hieronymus Emser (1477–1527) to Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), is based on the supposition that St. John’s Revelation is mainly a prophetic text. Alcázar, however, stated that the Revelation did not allude to any issues of contemporary or future history but to the two early victories of Christianity, one over Jerusalem, the other over pagan Rome (the latter yet to come, seen from the times of St. John).52 By explicitly putting his poem in the context of this retrospective (or “preterist”) interpretation of the Revelation, Bidermann takes a position in the contemporary debate on the interpretation of the biblical book. Moreover, he profits from the highly impressive imagery of the book of Revelation, which he versifies in his poem. And by relying on the preterist interpretation he is able to incorporate ancient history from Nero to Constantine the Great into a letter in which Church Militant desperately implores her “sister” Church Triumphant for help.53 Poetic genius, educational motives, and an awareness of the theological debates of his time are thoroughly intertwined in these poems. Incidentally, he resolutely broadened the way (which had been paved by Alenus) towards allegorical Epistulae Heroidum.

50 See, among others, Robin B. Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis. Apocalpyticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1988), 100–181. 51 For Catholic exegesis of this sort see Jean-Robert Armogathe, “Interpretations of the Revelation of John 1500–1800,” in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, ed. John Joseph Collins, Bernard McGinn and Stephen J. Stein, 3 vols. (New York: Continuum, 1998), vol. 2, 185–203, and Newport, Apocalypse, 66–89. Interpretations of the book of Revelation in a larger historical context can be found in Leroy E. Froom, The Prophetic Faith of our Fathers. The Historical Development of Prophetic Interpretation, 4 vols. (Washington: Review and Herald 1946–954), vol. 1. 52 See Alcázar’s preface in Rev[erendi] Patris Ludovici ab Alcasar Hispalensis SJ Theologi, […] Vestigatio Arcani Sensvs in Apocalypsi (Antwerp: Keerbergius, 1614), 4; Froom, The Prophetic Faith, vol. 2, 506–509; Armogathe, “Interpretations,” 191–193. 53 A comprehensive interpretation of the long as well as subtle letters from Church Militant can be found in Eickmeyer, Heroidenbrief, 331–383.

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Imitating Ovid To The Greater Glory Of God 433

Heroides as a Specifically Jesuit Genre: Poetic Epistles from the Dutch Province

The picture of heroic epistolography in the Baroque era would be incomplete without at least a quick glance at some contributions from the Netherlands. The enthusiasm for writing collections of Christian Heroides was shared by the Jesuit Balduinus Cabillavius (Baudouin Cabilliau; Boudewijn Cabeliau, 1568–1652).54 In 1636, he published his Epistolarum Heroum et Heroidum libri quatuor, which comprises letters by male as well as female writers, as their title already suggests.55 With this collection, Antwerp, the most important printing press in the Catholic Netherlands, saw the greatest number of heroic epistles ever. This work contains no less than ninety poems which can truly be said to map the Christian world. Even though Cabillavius presents only three characters from the Old Testament (I, 14 and 15: Abraham writes to Mary, and her answer; I, 16: David to Nathan) and none from the New Testament, there is a huge amount of hagiographic themes, at times very remote. A careful reader cannot help but discover that with this author quantity beats quality, but nevertheless Cabillavius turns some new corners. First, he tries to avoid or supple- ment topics that have already been treated by his predecessors. Second, he expands the model of double epistles, taken from Ovid and imitated by Eobanus as well as Alenus, into larger cycles.56 This is the case particularly in the fourth book, whose twenty-five epistles cover only two subjects: the legend of St. Alexius is laid out in thirteen poems and, interestingly enough, the legend of the Palatine Countess Genovefa of Brabant is presented in the following twelve epistles. The first topic is common knowledge for every Catholic writer, frequently treated by Cabillavius’s predecessors, while the second is remarkably new.57 This cycle of poems, which shows not only Cabillavius’s interest in contemporary literary subjects but also his poetic skills, can be seen as a fore- runner of the epistolary novel of the eighteenth century.

54 The only reliable sketch of his life is given by Dirk Sacré, “Een Latijns jezuïetendichter uit de zeventiende eeuw: Balduinus Cabillavius,” De zeventiende eeuw. Cultur in de Nederlanden in interdisciplinair perspectief 14 (1998): 107–117. 55 Balduinus Cabillavius, Epistolarum Heroum et Heroidum libri quatuor (Antwerp: Aertssens, 1636). For a brief overview see Dörrie, Der heroische Brief, 396–398. One of Cabillavius’s poems has recently been analyzed by Olga van Marion, Heldinnenbrieven. Ovidius’ Heroides in Nederland (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2005), 226–232. See her monograph in general for the Dutch tradition of heroic epistles. 56 On the cycle and its sources see Eickmeyer, Heroidenbrief, 387f. 57 A more detailed interpretation, especially of the Genovefa poems, can be found in Eickmeyer, Heroidenbrief, 406–423.

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Yet another innovation in Cabillavius’s monumental work is even more interesting in the given context. Whereas Bidermann, with whose Heroum Epistulae the author was doubtlessly familiar, presents only two Jesuits (Francisco de Borja and Francis Xavier) in his work,58 Cabillavius dwells on Jesuit hagiography in greater detail. Thirteen epistles have Jesuits as writers or addressees: Ignatius himself (III, 1–2) receives letters from St. Francis Xavier, the patrons of the Jesuit youth are present with three letters (III, 3–4: Luigi Gonzaga; III, 5: Stanisław Kostka), and Juan Carrera communicates with his guardian angel (III, 6). Moreover, a small cycle of letters in the first book is entirely dedicated to Francis Xavier. However, he is not the writer, but the addressee of seven letters written by his mother, who urges and implores him to return to his home castle (I, 17–23). The poems deal with the competition between the love of a mother (María) to her son and this son’s love to God, who wants him to fulfill his duty—a point most central to the early Society of Jesus, which was decreed to be a novice’s “new family.”59 As in many Ovidian epistles, such as Ariadne’s imploring letter to Theseus or Briseis’s submissive note to Achilles, the reader knows more than the heroine: Francis Xavier will not come back to his “lover”—in this case of Christian morality, his mother—but will die in the far-away land of Shangchuan Dao off the southern coast of China. Cabillavius, however, can justify the somewhat tragic outcome of this cycle of letters by stressing that Francis’s pledge to God rightfully outweighed his piety towards his mother.60 As we have seen, Cabillavius institutes Jesuit hagiography as a subject of heroic epistolography on a larger scale. Most probably, Jacob Bidermanns’s Heroides were a precise reaction to the work of his Dutch confrere, since they avoid all analogies to Cabillavius, and instead rely largely on topics taken from the Old Testament as well as on allegorical personifications.

58 Apart from Borja’s epistle, mentioned above, the same recurs in a preliminary poem to the third book (Bidermann, Heroum Epistulae, 99: “Programma ad Beatum Franci scum Borgiam”; see also the copperplate depicting the superior general who rejects a crowned skeleton on p. 98, probably a work of the famous engraver Raphael Sadeler from Munich); Francis Xavier does not appear as a writer of an epistle but in yet another preliminary poem he is the one who introduces the second book (ibid., 43: “Programma ad Sanctum Franciscum Xaverium”; see the copperplate depicting the Saint on p. 42, also by Sadeler). 59 For this crucial point see Jost Eickmeyer, “Ignatius, heros contra familiam. Der Gründer der Gesellschaft Jesu als Renaissance-Held im barocken Heroidenbrief des Johannes Vincartius SJ,” in Heroen und Heroisierungen in der Renaissance, ed. Achim Aurnhammer and Manfred Pfister (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013), 115–145. 60 The central poem of the cycle (I, 20) is interpreted in Eickmeyer, Heroidenbrief, 390–406.

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Imitating Ovid To The Greater Glory Of God 435

Yet another Jesuit poet from the North followed Cabillavius more closely. The Lille-born Johannes Vincartius (Jean Vincart, 1593–1679) not only debuted with two heroic epistles from Gonzaga and Kostka, but also published his own collection of Sacrae Heroides in 1640.61 His timing could not have been better, since the Society of Jesus celebrated its centennial that year. There is some indication that Vincart’s Heroides belong to a literary competition of Jesuit poets. In any case, he contents himself with twenty poems. However, each poem is decorated with its own illustration: copperplate engravings by the famous Flemish artist Peter Rucholle, half emblematic, half illustrating the following text. These pictures, combined with a sometimes lengthy prose introduction and a certain amount of footnotes explaining names, places, and phrases in the poem itself, may suggest a particularly didactic motivation on Vincart’s side. Indeed, he recommends his work to “eager undergraduates” in his preface.62 The first two books cover eight poems each and do not hold many surprises. In fact, in almost half of the poems Vincart treats biblical or legendary subjects already set into verse by Eobanus Hessus, Alenus, or Cabillavius. But he seems to avoid imitations of Bidermann’s latest poems, thus excluding characters from the Old Testament or allegories (with one telling exception, as we shall see). In the third book, however, Vincart shows himself as an eager pupil of Cabillavius or at least as a vivid participant in the centennial celebration. All poems of this book install Jesuits either as writers or as addressees: St. Ignatius receives a letter from his sister-in-law urging him to rejoin the family instead of living in a pilgrim’s hospice nearby (III, 1); Francis Xavier’s sister implores her father to finance her brother’s studies even after he has joined Ignatius (III, 2), Francisco de Borja is encouraged by his sister to follow his path of religion (III, 3); a Dutch woman addresses Peter Canisius and asks for spiritual help for her nephew (III, 4); Stanisław Kostka prays to the Holy Virgin (III, 5); Luigi Gonzaga writes to Superior General Claudio Acquaviva in order to join the Society of Jesus (III, 6); and the Dutch patron of Jesuit youth, Jan Berchmans, writes to the Virgin herself (III, 7). The reader gets to know the most famous Jesuits of the past hundred years, their spirituality, their steadfastness, and their inner motivations, for the letter is a genre most fitting for

61 Epistolae Beati Aloysij Gonzagæ et Stanislai Kostkæ […] (Liège: Joannes Ouwerx, 1632). Johannes Vincartius, Sacrarum Heroidum Epistolae (Tournai: Adrien Quinqué, 1640). See Dörrie, Der heroische Brief, 398–399; his epistle from St. Barbara is interpreted in van Marion, Heldinnenbrieven, 222–224 (in comparison to a Dutch epistle on the same subject by Joost van den Vondel). 62 SeeVincart, Sacrarum Heroidum Epistolae, fol. *4v–*5r: “in gratiam Studiosae Juventutis.”

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436 Eickmeyer such intimate conversation. In short, Vincart strives to educate the “eager undergraduates” of Jesuit schools about the Society and its heroes. This enter- prise is crowned by the last poem of the book, which combines Cabillavius’s interest in Jesuit history with Bidermann’s introduction of allegorical writers. However, it is not Ecclesia who writes the last letter but the Society itself, per- sonified in a female “Societas” who addresses her offspring, that is, the Jesuits of the past (III, 8). Vincart describes the purpose of this letter explicitly in his introduction:

Because we are celebrating a hundred years since our SOCIETY was founded by IGNATIUS, it seems indeed adequate to commemorate the famous deeds which our confreres have accomplished to the honor of God and the salvation of the souls.63

If this qualification already alludes to the Jesuit motto “Omnia ad maiorem Dei gloriam,” the following illustration (figure 1) further accentuates Vincart’s point.64 In the foreground, we see two bare-headed Jesuits proverbially working in the vineyard of the Lord, another one to the right swings a spear against an attacking wild beast, probably a dog. This certainly hints at the Society’s aim to defend Catholic religion against Lutheran or Calvinist attacks, implicitly dis- credited as “mad dogs.” In the middle ground, another Jesuit with a hat and a pilgrim’s staff represents the Jesuits’ self-conception as pilgrims as well as their well-known mobility. Moreover, the man seems to be oriented towards a female figure at the engraving’s left margin. She symbolizes the allegorical Societas, pen and paper on her knees, while with the left hand she is holding her staff. She is crowned by a halo with the Christogram “IHS” in it, a combination known since St. Bernardino of Siena and most commonly used by the Society of Jesus.65 Strangely, Societas does not seem to interact with the Jesuits in front of her, but to gaze over the vast sea in the middle and background. At the horizon a ship is about to break the chine, showing a similar Christogram on top of its mast. This vessel, combined with the group of feathered natives at the shore in the middle ground, doubtlessly alludes to the Jesuit missionary activities overseas. Further, it directs the beholder’s gaze towards the cloudy ring coming down from the engraving’s top margin. There, in a place above the

63 Quoted in Jean Vincart, Sacrarum Heroidum Epistolae. Editio quarta (Munich: Hermann à Gelder’s heirs, 1697), 102. 64 Published in Vincart, Sacrarum Heroidum Epistolae (1697), 103. 65 See for instance, O’Malley and Bailey, The Jesuits and the Arts, 36–37, 62, 174, 200–201, 384.

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Imitating Ovid To The Greater Glory Of God 437

Figure 1 The illustration ‘Symbolum’ further accentuates Vincart’s point. skies, enlightened by the sun, he sees a group of ten figures which are not easily distinguishable, but are marked as martyrs by the palm branches in their hands. Judging from their garments, the two central figures could be identified as St. Ignatius on the left and St. Francis Xavier on the right. Hence the beholder gets to peek into the heaven of the Jesuit saints. This illustration, called “Symbolum,” is intended to tune the reader to the subsequent letter. On the one hand, it mimetically shows the writing Societas; on the other, it uses emblematic meanings, like those that adhere to the vineyard, the dog, and (last but not least) the palm tree on the outer right margin of the engraving. This palm tree, as explained by the prose text below the illustration, symbolizes old age without oppression by hardship or enemies. This quite traditional emblematic meaning is further connected to the Jesuit saints marked by their palm branches.66 Thus the palm tree becomes a symbol of victory, boldly presented here after a hundred years of success.

66 See among others Andrea Alciato, Emblemata cvm commentariis […]. Paulo Tozzi: Padua, 1621. Reprint (New York: Garland, 1976), 177. For a general introduction, see G. Richard Dimler, Studies in the Jesuit Emblem (New York: AMS Press, 2007).

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In the following epistle, Societas writes to her offspring “in the world,” intro- ducing herself and giving an account of a kind of “enthusiastic” flight she took to a place above the skies, partly guided by an angel or an allegory of spiritual love.67 In this place she enters a secluded area, whose bejeweled gates are marked with the Christogram: “I understood in an instant and said to myself silently: ‘This place holds the flock of the LOIOLIDES.’”68 Inside the building, she indeed beholds all her “children” that passed away, including the first founders:

At the most elevated spot stood Loyola with his bright flames. And like in warfare, he was the first one at the palm of glory, too. Behind him those four, equal in rank, who saw Rome strain the reins of the State with their strong hands. And nearby but a small group—those who wore the Infula [i.e. were ministers of the Church] and who were taken from my bosom by the highest orders.69

The flames around St. Ignatius’s head mark him as an ecstatic, a feature well- established in the hagiographical tradition as well as in many depictions of him.70 “Like in warfare” in v. 58 alludes to Ignatius’s knightly virtue before his conversion, as he had proved himself during the battle of Pamplona. This equally well-known biographical detail is transposed into the religious sphere. As was the case before, when he was a warrior, he is now the most distinguished among the Jesuit saints. The other allusions may have required explanation and Vincart gives them in notes 4 and 5. After Ignatius come the four superiors general, who have led the Society from the “headquarters” in Rome, and after them a few Jesuit cardinals, bishops, and patriarchs, such as Robert Bellarmine, Andrés Oviedo, and others. Vincart further explains that Ignatius had ordered his confreres not to accept any rank within church hierarchy, which is why Societas refers to the “highest orders” from God that made her comply with these exceptions. It is obvious how Vincart has matched the poem with Rucholle’s engraving. “The most elevated spot” means exactly the one side of the celestial sphere

67 Vincart, Sacrarum Heroidum Epistolae (1697), 205, vv. 37–48. 68 Ibid., 206, vv. 49f.: “Protinus agnovi, tacitoque in pectore dixi: LOIOLIDAE populum continet iste locus.” 69 Ibid., vv. 57–62. 70 See for example Paul Begheyn, “An Unknown Illustrated Life of Ignatius of Loyola by Petrus Firens (about 1609),” AHSI 75 (2006), 137–157, here the plates 149 below and 151 above.

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Imitating Ovid To The Greater Glory Of God 439 depicted in it, where Ignatius is recognizable. A few verses later, Parte Alia introduces St. Francis Xavier who indeed held the other side of the gathering on top of the cloud.71 Vincart goes on to show how his Societas examines the Jesuits group by group: missionaries, preachers, scholars, martyrs, and youths, all of them with explanatory notes for the pupils to follow. But Vincart aims at more than elegant Latin verses and a lesson in Jesuit history. The allegorical writer soon comes to reflect on the present day and seems to have some doubts:

Am I heard? Or will the grandchild—different from his forefather—com- mit shameful deeds, because his eagerness falters? O, I am wrong! It is certain, surely I have deceived myself in this suspicion: No offspring of Loyola can ever be degenerate.72

These verses allude to a typical beginning of Ovidian verse (“Fallimur”), normally showing someone in doubts or deceived by his or her lover.73 But they invert this allusion in terms of Christian “parodia”: Societas is, quite on the contrary, reassured that her younger “offspring” will follow their ancestors, yet it is a reassurance not without admonition to the (Jesuit) reader. Hence she commemorates the Jesuits’ vows as a precaution and concludes her letter with an optimistic and praising address to the current Superior General Muzio Vitelleschi. In Vincart’s Heroides one finds remarkably little of Ovid, and also of that urge to justify this adaptation of poetry from a Christian point of view. The genre has become an available and appealing frame for biblical, hagiographical, historical, and even celebratory contents. With the Dutch Jesuits, heroic epistolography has reached a peak in terms of variety of topics (Cabillavius) as well as self-reference within the Jesuit culture (Vincart).

Allegorical Ends: Jacob Balde and the End of Heroides Sacrae

By the middle of the century elegiac poetry, and heroic epistolography with it, was so ubiquitous that backlashes had to be expected. The famous Jesuit poet and historiographer at the Bavarian court Jacob Balde (1604–1668), aptly dubbed the “German Horace,” turned to elegiac poetry in his later period. Urania Victrix (1663), his last major work, presents a special case of the

71 Vincart, Sacrarum Heroidum Epistolae (1697), 206, vv. 65f. 72 Ibid., 210, vv. 115–118. 73 See Ovid, Ars amatoria 1, 6, 49–51 (two times); 3, 12, 7; inverted: Tristia 3, 1, 37.

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Christian heroic epistle.74 In the extensive introduction (“Isagoge”) to this book, the author seems well aware of the fact that writing Heroides has become a common fashion:

What has not yet been bewailed in lamenting verses, what not rattled off in amorous poetry? […] Who would doubt that the quiver of worldly and divine Love holds no arrows anymore? The Scheldt has swollen from the Magdalene’s tears, they even drowned Antwerp and the whole Belgian country. The Tiber rushes on, broadened by the tears of the Roman Bride after Alexius left her. Epistles of heroes and heroines are flying around everywhere: Theophilus greets his Dorothea, Valerian the groom his brother Tiburtius. King Gelimer is sighing, the shipwrecked Emanuel Sosa is trembling. Polydora writes to Alexius, Theodora to Didymus, Alenia to Phosphorianus, Barbara to Dioscorus, Theopista to Eustache and—of course—a second Penelope to her Ulysses. We even have Eve, the first-created mother, our ancestress, who wonders at the beauty of earthly Paradise as well as she bewails its loss. Tirea writes about the Great Flood, Sibyl about the insane construction of the Babel tower, Mirjam about the drowning Pharao and Judith about the killing of Holofernes. Who does not desire the “pious desires” in these days?75

There can be no doubt that this harsh verdict includes the whole history of the genre. The characters Balde names stem without exception from the authors mentioned above. In his final pun he even extends the verdict to a famous and often re-edited book of elegies and emblems, the Pia Desideria by the Dutch Jesuit Herman Hugo.76 Whoever reviews his predecessors with a sharp tongue like this can by no means write heroic epistles in the traditional way. Balde knows this and presents thirty poems which are loosely based on the concept of Heroides Sacrae. Referring to St. Augustine and to the Franciscan mystic Jacopone da Todi (c.1236–1306), both of whom bid farewell to mundane plea- sures to become firm Christians, Balde creates his own version of the heroic

74 We have a recent edition of the first two out of five books: Jacob Balde, Urania Victrix— Die siegreiche Urania. Liber I–II—Erstes und zweites Buch, ed., trans., and comm. Lutz Claren, Wilhelm Kühlmann, Wolfgang Schibel, Robert Seidel and Hermann Wiegand (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003). See in particular the editors’ introduction; a short overview can be found in Dörrie, Der heroische Brief, 404–405. 75 Balde, Urania, 12, ll. 8–25. English translation of my own. 76 On his work see Mark Carter Leach, “The Literary and Emblematic Activity of Herman Hugo, S. J. (1588–1629)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 1979).

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Imitating Ovid To The Greater Glory Of God 441 epistle. His main figure, Urania, serves as an allegory of the Christian soul. Like a new Penelope she is beset by five suitors, i.e. the five senses that try to distract her from the contemplation of Christ and God. These suitors are each sec- onded by two supporters, whose profession fits the respective sense (e.g. Visus, for vision, collaborates with a painter and a mathematician). All these “men” write flattering, often soliciting letters to Urania, who answers them by wit- tingly turning down their advances. Moral didacticism is obviously at work here, and in the hands of a lesser poet these cycles of wooing and rejecting epistles might have become a dull read. Balde, however, not only knows his Ovid but also includes issues from contemporary science (inferred by the senses) and arts (music and—most reflectively—poetry seconding the sense of hearing) along with a lot of fancy detail to create an allegorical work of its own kind. The censor, however, did not approve of the work, at least not of its second part: there were too many ambiguous arguments, and the letters of some suitors were thought to be too convincing. Hence the work has never been published in its entirety. But nevertheless it marks the culminating point of allegorical heroic epistles. Compared to Bidermann’s Ecclesia-poems, Balde’s letters lack historical grounding. Instead, his Urania represents an abstract stronghold of Christian constancy that tends to transcend space and time. Only Alenus’s letter from the soul to the body may prove to be a valid predeces- sor within the genre.77 Yet this letter is still confined to eschatological matters, whereas Urania and her suitors touch on a large variety of issues all prone to tempt the soul but finally rejected “ad maiorem Dei gloriam.” Balde’s Urania may have created new impulses for the genre, but the heyday of Heroides Christianae in Germany was over by then. Around 1666, the Silesian Baroque poet Christian Hoffmann von Hoffmannswaldau circulated his Heldenbrieffe, the first collection of heroic epistles in German.78 But his poems on historical and sometimes ambiguous relationships are indebted to other sources than Christian epistles, particularly the British tradition of Mark Alexander Boyd’s Latin and Michael Drayton’s English collections.79 In the

77 For a comparison see Eickmeyer, Heroidenbrief, 473–485. 78 They were printed as late as 1679/1680; see Christian Hoffmann von Hoffmannswaldau, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2: Deutsche Übersetzungen und Getichte, ed. Franz Heiduk. 2 vols. Reprint (Hildesheim: Olms, 1984), vol. 2, 429–600. 79 Marcus Alexander Bodius, Epistulae heroides et hymni (Antwerp, i.e.: La Rochelle: Holtin, 1592); see the research in Ian Campbell Cunningham, “Marcus Alexander Bodius, Scotus,” in A Palace in the Wild. Essays on Vernacular Culture and Humanism in Late- Medieval and Renaissance Scotland, ed. Luuk A.J.R. Houwen, Alistair A. MacDonald and

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442 Eickmeyer aftermath, Protestant German poets such as Johann Anselm von Zigler und Kliphausen or Christian Daniel Omeis published biblical heroic epistles mainly following Eobanus Hessus and Andreas Alenus. But in the eighteenth century the fashion of sentimental epistle poems and novels (such as Alexander Pope’s famous and frequently translated poem Abelard to Heloise) propelled the genre towards a completely different direction.

Sally L. Mapstone (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), 161–174. Drayton’s England’s Heroicall Epistles are accessible in The Works of Michael Drayton. Trecentenary Edition, ed. John W. Hebel [Kathleen Tillotson and Bernard H. Newdigate]. 5 vols. Reprint (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961), vol. 2, 129–309.

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