Abstract
Centering on the public execution of a priest in Piazza San Marco on November 10, 1561, this chapter develops an understanding of pastoral theatre that equates to a theatrical play of salvation orchestrated by Jesuit priests in order to forward the agenda of the Counter-Reformation. Jesuit pastoral theatre revolves around the tale of two shepherds, one who leads the flock astray through sin and one who harnesses the downfall of such sins to reveal the path toward forgiveness and eternal life. From the perspective of the Venetian Jesuits, these two identities coexist within the body of one shepherd, Father Pietro Leon da Valcamonica, whose villainous actions, framed through a particular philosophy of love and forgiveness, transfigure him into a martyr.
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Notes
- 1.
Cicogna Codex 3239, Biblioteca di Museo Civico Correr [The Library of the Correr Civic Museum], Venezia, n.p. Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna (1789–1868) was a bibliophile and scholar whose extensive collection of documents now belongs to the Library of the Correr Civic Museum. As recently as the 1990s, scholars have cited this document as “Cicogna 2082,” but the newer numbering system identifies it as 3239.
- 2.
See also Giuseppe Tassini, Curiosità veneziana. Venezia: Scarabellin, 1933.
- 3.
For the link between the window seats of the library and the box seats of the Tron and Michiel theatres in Venice, see Eugene J. Johnson, “The Short, Lascivious Lives of Two Venetian Theatres, 1580–1585,” Renaissance Quarterly vol. 55, no. 3 (Autumn, 2002): 946. “[T]he utterly new boxes of the Michiel and Tron theatres,” he writes, “provided elevated, separated spaces for the patricians to watch performances and in turn to be watched. Both built on an old Venetian tradition of using windows as private viewing platforms for the public spectacles.” For more on the theatricality of Piazza San Marco, see Egle Renata Trincanato, “Rappresentatività e funzionalità di Piazza San Marco” Piazza San Marco: l’architettura, la storia, le funzioni, a cura di Giuseppe Samonà (Umberto Franzoni, Padova [Padua] 1970) 87.
- 4.
“Nel dicembre del ‘60 alcune convertite lasciavano il convento e una di esse svelava di essere stata qualche volta toccata e baciata da [un certo sacerdote] Giampietro. Palmio interessò varie personalità a un’inchiesta: Agostino Barbarigo, Tommaso e Giustiniano Contarini.”
- 5.
Archivio di stato, Venzia, Consiglio dei Dieci, parti criminali, filza 14 (1561–1564): “[…] capellono et confessor delle convertide dalla Zudeca ritenuto.”
- 6.
Ibid: “[…] questo pad. Zuan Piero da […] sia confinato per tutto il tempo della sua vita in la prigion […] et gli sia fra le due colone di S. Marco tagliata la testa si dal muora.”
- 7.
Ibid: “da matina prossimo sia al sop.to pre [prete] Zuanpiero tagliata la testa via dal bugio fra le due Colone de S. Marco si del muora et se doppo il corpo suo sia abrugiato […] ed si converti in cenera.”
- 8.
The Spiritual Exercises, the document, and the exercises that it dictates to individuals desiring to strengthen or renew their allegiance to Christ, are extremely important objects of study in terms of Jesuit history. I look at the document and the exercises in more detail in Chapter 6.
- 9.
This definition of dramaturgy draws inspiration from Maaike Bleeker, who writes about “the possibility [of thinking] of dramaturgy in terms of the organization of an event. […] These events can be organized in such a way as to guide or direct the attention of the audience in a very specific direction and towards a very specific meaning, while at other moments the audience can be left free to wander around.” Admittedly, however, the specific historical situation in which the Jesuits appear has little to do with the twenty-first-century context in which Bleeker is writing. Maaike Bleeker, “Dramaturgy as a Mode of Looking,” Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory vol. 13 (2003): 165.
- 10.
Falvey 15: “During the comforting ritual, the prisoner was urged to conform his humiliation and suffering to that of Christ and to comport himself with love and dignity as Christ himself did—to ‘perform,’ so to speak, in an all-too-realistic Passion play.” See also, Massimo Ferretti, “In Your Face: Paintings for the Condemned in Renaissance Italy,” The Art of Executing Well, ed. Nicholas Terpstra (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press: 2008) 79–97.
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Daddario, W. (2017). Jesuit Pastoral Theatre: The Case of Father Pietro Leon da Valcamonica. In: Baroque, Venice, Theatre, Philosophy. Performance Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49523-1_4
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