Monarchomachs : Unorthodox teaching in the 16th and 17th centuries Jesuit narrative and theatre

Abstract

It is widely recognized that for more than 200 years Jesuits promoted theatre for educational purposes in their colleges. Many scholars affirm that the Society of Jesus understood drama mainly as a means for disseminating Roman Catholic doctrine. However, some historians have recently hypothesized that it is especially through theatre that Jesuits intellectuals tried to disseminate unorthodox theories about morality, knowledge and power. Aiming at a better definition of the problem, our study is focusing on the analysis of several Jesuits’ theatre manuscripts and their contextualization in the coeval debate on power and authority. Specifically, it demonstrates how the stories told in the majority of the staged tragedies not only served as examples of ethical and virtuous conduct; they were an alternative medium to promote the theories of the so-called monarchomachs, and in particular the justification of the tyrannicide when clergymen and secular censors officially forbade their promulgation (Juan de Mariana’s book burned in Paris; the decree issued by the French Parliament on July 4th 1610; the letter sent in 1614 to all the provinces by the Jesuit General Claudio Aquaviva expressly forbidding to write about tyrannicide).[...]