Playing the Martyr : Theater and Theology in Early Modern France 9781611488036, 9781611488043, 9781611488050

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Playing the Martyr

S C È N E S

F R A N C O P H O N E S :

STUDIES IN FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE THEATER

Series Editor Logan J. Connors Bucknell University The only North American book series dedicated to French-language theater, Scènes francophones publishes theoretically and historically informed research on dramatic texts and productions from medieval France to the contemporary French-speaking world. Linguistically focused but broad in scope, this series features monographs and multi-authored volumes on dramatic literatures, theories, and practices. Scènes francophones, which publishes in English, welcomes new research on specific playwrights or actors as well as analysis of particular theaters, dramatic repertoires, and performance spaces. Research in which theater plays a leading role among other genres, themes, or institutions is also encouraged. This series supports research on the social, economic, and cultural history of theater across time periods, from hexagonal France to the reaches of the French-speaking world today. Titles in the Series Playing the Martyr: Theater and Theology in Early Modern France Christopher Semk Acting Up: Staging the Subject in Enlightenment France Jeffrey M. Leichman

S C È N E S

F R A N C O P H O N E S

Playing the Martyr T H E AT E R A N D T H E O LO GY I N E A R LY M O D E R N F R A N C E

CHRISTOPHER SEMK

B U C K N E L L

L E W I S B U R G U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

Published by Bucknell University Press Co-published with The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowmanlittlefield.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2017 by Christopher Semk All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-61148-803-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-61148-804-3 (electronic)

™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

Published by Bucknell University Press Co-published with The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowmanlittlefield.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2017 by Christopher Semk All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-61148-803-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-61148-805-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-61148-804-3 (electronic)

™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Note on Translations

vii

Acknowledgments ix Introduction: A Christian Melpomene?

xi

1

The Separation of Church and Stage

2

The Spectacle of Martyrdom and the Spectacle of the Stage

32

3

“Ex histrionis martyr factus”: Genesius, Acting, and Martyrdom

62

Polyeucte, martyr and Corneille’s Sacramental Poetics

90

4

1

Conclusion: Theater and Theology at the Threshold of Modernity

121

Notes

127

Bibliography 155 Index

165

About the Author

173

[v]

NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS

I

the early modern texts under discussion accessible to a wide audience, they have been translated. I used modern translations wherever possible. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. N

ORDER

TO

MAKE

[ vii ]

AC KNOWLEDGMENTS

T

conceived as a doctoral dissertation at Indiana University and I am deeply grateful to the many people who helped to shape it along the way. First of all, this book would not have been possible without the guidance and encouragement of Jérôme Brillaud and Rebecca Wilkin, who not only directed the dissertation but continued to offer their unflagging support in the years that followed. I am also grateful for the intellectual support of my colleagues in the French department at Yale. I completed substantial research for this book during a sabbatical that was supported by a Morse Fellowship from Yale. I also thank Greg Clingham and Logan Connors for their editorial assistance. I am deeply indebted to the colleagues who have generously read portions of the manuscript (and in some cases, the entire manuscript!), responded to conference papers, indulged me in conversation about saints and martyrs, or offered suggestions for improvement at various stages of this project: Faith Beasley, Hall Bjørnstad, Jean-Vincent Blanchard, Juliette Cherbuliez, Ellen McClure, Ned Duval, Jody Enders, Margaret Gray, Katherine Ibbett, Michele Longino, Larry Norman, Ellen MacKay, Eric MacPhail, and Eric Méchoulan. Their guidance has greatly improved this book, all mistakes, shortcomings, and infelicities are my own. I thank my parents for never asking “What will you do with that?” when I declared, at eighteen, my intention to study French literature, and for their generous support through the years. Last but certainly not least, I thank Jonathan for his love and encouragement, without which I could have never finished this book. HIS

BOOK

WA S

O R I G I N A L LY

[ ix ]

INTRODUCTION A Christian Melpomene?

I

N T H E P R E F A C E to his 1646 collection of Christian poetry (Poësies chrestiennes), Antoine Godeau (1605–1672) enthusiastically called for a Christianization of the arts. Godeau, bishop, poet, and occasional visitor to Madame de Rambouillet’s famous literary salon (where he was known as the “Nain de Julie” [Julie’s Dwarf ] thanks to his small stature), was an important participant in seventeenth-century literary life. He belonged to a group of writers whose meetings would give rise to the Académie Française, of which he was a founding member. As an author, Godeau showed particular interest in fusing the aesthetic pleasures of literature with the spiritual and moral benefits of religion, comprising, in addition to spiritual poetry, fashionable paraphrases of the psalms and a heroic poem based on the life of Saint Paul.1 Though he wrote no drama himself, Godeau envisioned an active role for religion on the French stage. In the preface to the Poësies chrestiennes, he celebrates recent reforms in French theater that “purified,” the stage. These reforms included ridding the stage of excessive violence and coarseness and bringing it in line with the precepts of Aristotelian theater extrapolated from the Poetics. Poetic reform was only the first step, in Godeau’s estimation, toward the ultimate reformation of the stage: its Christianization.

Les Muses Françoises ne furent jamais si modestes, et je croy qu’elles seront bien tost toutes Chrestiennes. Des jà le théâtre, où elles oublioient si souvent leur qualité de Vierges, se purifie et il y a sujet d’esperer que la scène pourra prendre bien tost sur les bords du Jourdain, de mesme que sur les bords du Tybre et du Tage, que le sang des Martyrs la rougira et que la Virginité y fera éclater ses triomphes. Ce sera la ramener à son institution ancienne et instruire les spectateurs en les divertissant. 2 [ xi ]

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[The French Muses have never been so modest and I believe that they will soon wholly Christian. The theater, where they so often forgot their virginal quality, is alreading being purified and there is reason to hope that the stage will soon take on the banks of the Jordan as it has the banks of the Tiber and the Tagus, that it will run red with the blood of the martyrs and shine with the triumphs of virgins. This will return the stage to its ancient institution and instruct the spectators while entertaining them.]

In this passage, Godeau sketches a brief, but provocative, history of the theater, dividing it roughly into three eras: its ancient origins, its immoral past, and the purified present. The modern French stage, characterized by decorum and moral lessons, represents a return to theater’s ritual origins as an art form that offers both pleasure and instruction, edification and entertainment. As for the immoral past, where the Muses so often forgot their chastity, Godeau may have had in mind the excessive violence and the crude humor of earlier mystery plays and farces, vestiges of which continued to appear in the theater of the early seventeenth century. The crucial point in this passage is that modern theater is a reformed theater in every sense of the word: a theater that is not only formally different from what preceded it, but that also restores ancient principles and purposes. There is little doubt that Godeau’s praise refers to the renovation—or redemption—that French theater underwent in the decade preceding the publication of his preface. In 1637, the Académie Française, founded by Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) just two years earlier, issued its verdict on Pierre Corneille’s immensely successful but poetically problematic tragicomedy Le Cid, condemning the play’s lack of verisimilitude and decorum, the dual guarantors of good form, good entertainment, and good morals above all. Not long afterward, in 1641, Louis XIII pronounced a royal edict exonerating actors from the civil crime of infamy (they remained, however, criminal in the eyes of the Church).3 Indeed, by 1646, when the Poësies chrestiennes appeared, the French stage had become so immaculate that the mere hint of prostitution, let alone the word itself, could allegedly cause a play to flop.4 This is the optimistic context in which the bishop Godeau, animated by the spirit of the Catholic Reformation, envisioned a theater that would soon be wholly Christian, in matter as well as morals. Such a theater would edify audiences with exemplary models of chastity and fortitude chosen from the rich body of hagiographical literature: Agnes, Vincent, Catherine of Alexandria, Eustachius and his family, Polyeuctus and Nearchus, Theodora and Didymus, among many [ xii ]

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others. Furthermore, this theater would differ from medieval mystery plays and popular forms of devotional drama in its neoclassical form, including the division into five acts, the restrained number of actors, and the use of decorous speech. This theater would satisfy a thirst for the transcendent and illustrate the invisible workings of divine providence through an art form that was itself elevated. It would be, to borrow Peter Brook’s terminology, a theater that was “holy” but certainly not “rough.”5 Godeau’s vision of a stage inspired by a Christian Melpomene was not ecclesiastical wishful thinking but in fact a reality. For a time, the Parisian stage did indeed run red with the blood of martyrs, as Christian tragedies (“tragédies chrétiennes”) brought to life the familiar hagiographical accounts of the martyrs’ perseverance in the face of death that appeared in devotional literature, decorated the stained glass windows of churches, and vividly emerged from pulpit oratory. Playwrights who had previously found their subjects in mythology or ancient history now looked toward collections of saints’ lives and the Roman Martyrology for their source material. Actors who had cut their teeth performing pagan heroes now incarnated Christian martyrs. And spectators who had wept or shuddered at human foibles now beheld martyrs uncompromising in their conviction and steadfast in their suffering. During the early 1640s in particular, hagiographical theater was all the rage in Paris, with six plays in 1642–1643 alone. Between 1636 and 1646, sixteen religious plays appeared on Parisian stages, eleven of which adapted the lives of Christian martyrs.6 The most celebrated of these plays is undoubtedly Pierre Corneille’s Polyeucte, martyr (1642), which dramatizes the final hours of Saint Polyeuctus, a third-century martyr from Melitene, on the fringes of the Roman Empire (today Malatya, Turkey). A saint whose name, as Corneille observed “beaucoup ont plutôt appris à la Comédie qu’à l’Eglise” [many had learned at the theater rather than at church].7 The play was a massive success and would later become a ballet composed by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1679) and, in the nineteenth century, would furnish the canvas for two operas: Gaetano Donizetti’s Poliuto (1838) and Charles Gounod’s Polyeucte (1878). A tragedy that is still read and performed, Polyeucte perhaps best represents, to readers and audiences today, the golden age of religious theater in early modern France. That golden age was short-lived. By the end of the decade, the saints would retire from the Parisian stage, thereafter appearing only in print or on the planks of Jesuit or provincial theaters. The optimism that characterized Godeau’s vision of religious theater had given way to pessimism and renewed antitheatrical sentiment, according to which the pulpit and the stage could not be more different [ xiii ]

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in purpose and effect. Parnassus and Calvary parted ways.8 While all professional theater fell under the censorious gaze of ecclesiastical critics, the allegedly reformed theater was particularly suspect for it was considered a superficial attempt to cover illicit passions with a veil of propriety. The Oratorian Jean-François Senault (c. 1601–1672), for example, wrote that “plus [la Comédie] semble honneste, plus je la tiens criminelle. . . . C’est l’appast qui couvre l’hameçon auquel il est attaché” [the more honest the theater appears to be, the more I consider it criminal. . . . This is the bait that conceals the fishook.].9 Antitheatrical writers like Senault pulled back the veil to reveal the hideous face of vainglory and lust that, they claimed, polluted the audience unawares. It is no surprise, then, that they considered religious tragedy especially offensive. The saints that appeared on stage, for the Jansenist Pierre Nicole (1625–1695), exhibited beneath a veneer of sanctity a host of virtues more pagan than pious: “ceux qui ont voulu introduire des Saints et des Saintes sur le théâtre ont été contraints de les faire paraître orgeuilleux, et de leur mettre dans la bouche des discours plus propres à ces héros de l’ancienne Rome, qu’à des Saints et des Martyrs” [those who wished to introduce saints into the theater were constrained to make them appear prideful and to put into their mouths speeches more suitable for ancient Roman heroes than for saints and martyrs].10 For Senault, Nicole, and others, “Christian tragedy” was at best an oxymoron, at worse a spiritually damaging bait-and-switch.11 Godeau himself is emblematic of the pessimistic development with respect to religious theater. In 1654, he published an expanded edition of his Poësies chrestiennes, in which the hopeful vision of Christian theater is tempered by the inclusion of an antitheatrical sonnet, “Sur la Comédie” [On Theater]. Dispelling any doubt that the omission was intentional, this edition also includes an antitheatrical sonnet, “Sur la comédie” [On Theater]. In stark terms, the poem captures the distance between the bishop’s earlier vision of Christian tragedy and his newfound suspicion of the stage. The sonnet begins by speciously lauding the heights to which French theater had attained before turning, in the tercets, to a sobering evaluation of theater’s moral pretensions: Le theatre jamais ne fut si glorieux, Le jugement s’y joint à la magnificence; Une regle severe en bannit la licence, Et rien n’y blesse plus ny l’esprit, ny les yeux. On y voit condamner les actes vicieux, Malgré les vains efforts d’une injuste puissance, [ xiv ]

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On y voit à la fin couronner l’innocence, Et luire en sa faveur la Iustice des Cieux. Mais en cette leçon si pompeuse & si vaine, Le profit est douteux, & la perte certaine, Le remede y plaist moins que ne fait le poison; Elle peut reformer un esprit idolâtre, Mais pour changer les mœurs, & regler leur raison, Les Chrestiens ont l’Eglise, & non pas le théâtre. 12 [The theater has never been so glorious, It joins judgment and magnificence, A strict rule banishes immoderation, And it no longer harms mind nor eyes. One sees vicious acts condemned, Despite the vain efforts of unjust powers, At the end, one sees innocence crowned, And in its favor Celestial Justice shines. But in this pompous and vain lesson Profit is doubftul, and the penalty certain, The remedy pleases less than the poison; It [the theater] may reform an idolatrous mind, But to change their morals and guide their reason, Christians have the Church, not the stage.]

Godeau does not deny that the theater might have some positive influence—it can, after all, reform an “idolatrous mind,” which is to say one already lost to a world of falsehood and simulacra. Nor is his assertion that that “le profit est douteux” unique to theater’s detractors—Corneille cast doubt on the purported moral benefit of the theater when he dismissed Aristotelian catharsis as a “belle idée” [nice idea].13 Indeed, what is especially striking about Godeau’s sonnet is the final line, which advocates not for the disestablishment of the theater, but rather for a strict separation of the theater and the church. Christians, Godeau suggests, cannot hope to receive any moral benefit from attending the theater and so, we conclude, should neither attend the theater nor make dubious claims regarding its moral suitability. On this view, hagiographical theater is all the more damnable because it promises to sanctify the stage when in fact it sullies the saints. This represents a surprising about-face [ xv ]

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for the previously optimistic Godeau: the French Melpomene has never been and indeed can never hope to be “toute chrestienne” [wholly Christian]. What, then, do we make of those plays that did wash the planks of Parisian theaters with the blood of martyrs? Martyrological Theater

Martyrological theater is the subject of this book. More precisely, the four chapters that follow will investigate the martyrological theater that flourished on the Parisian stage during the 1640s and the critical afterlife of this unusual corpus in ongoing early modern debates about the nature of theater, religion, and the relationship between the two. The 1640s was a crucial decade for the development of French theater. This period witnessed the exoneration of actors (1641), the renovation of Paris’s two professional theaters (the Théâtre du Marais in 1644 and the Hôtel de Bourgogne shortly thereafter), the composition of major theoretical texts on the stage, and a surge in the popularity of tragedy, including martyrological tragedy—tragedies that take as their subject the martyrdom of a saint. Professional playwrights’ engagement with martyrological material certainly suggests a pious impulse or a desire to capitalize on the public’s taste for religious subjects, but throughout this book I will argue that the 1640s turn toward martyrological subjects was part of a much broader reflection on the relationship between theater and religion. Rather than view religion as a theme or ethical system that might structure the moral vision of a given play, I consider religion as an essential interlocutor not only in early modern debates regarding key concepts in dramatic poetics, such as verisimilitude and imitation, but also in dramatic practice. By focusing our attention on the dynamic and productive relationship between theater and religion, I demonstrate the centrality of religion to the development of neoclassical French theater, thus offering an alternative to the secular, political (absolutist) lens through which scholars of the period so often view its theater. Before going on, the designation martyrological tragedy deserves some attention. First of all, none of the playwrights who composed such plays used this term. In fact, there was no consensus on what to call tragedies about martyrdom. Balthasar Baro (1596–1650), for example, opted for the generically neutral poëme dramatique [dramatic poem]. Baro, who is perhaps best known for finishing Honoré d’Urfé’s pastoral novel L’Astrée, was also a playwright and composed a play on the martyrdom of Saint Eustachius, Saint Eustache martyr (1649). Others, such as Nicolas Mary Desfontaines (c. 1610–1652), simply dubbed their martyrologi[ xvi ]

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cal plays “tragedies.” Desfontaines, who was an actor in Molière’s Illustre Théâtre as well as a playwright, produced three hagiographical dramas, two of which are based on martyrs. Pierre Corneille produced Polyeucte as a “tragédie chrétienne” [Christian tragedy]. Similarly, contemporary scholars describe the plays variously, as “devotional plays,” “religious tragedies,” “sacred dramas,” and “martyr plays.” Each designation carries with it a set of assumptions regarding both the nature and the purpose of the play. A “devotional play,” for example, foregrounds the relationship between religious theater and popular piety, suggesting that the play is a paraliturgical, pious expression of devotion. Conversely, “martyr play” highlights the subject without suggesting any devotional purpose. Both definitions, by adopting the more general term play rather than tragedy, prudently skirt the problem of assigning a fixed genre to what amounts to a heterogeneous corpus. The problem of holding a diverse set of plays to a single standard is apparent in the work of Kosta Loukovitch, whose 1933 study of religious theater in France was admirably one of the first attempts to synthesize the vast corpus of religious plays extending from the sixteenth century through the end of the seventeenth. L’évolution de la tragédie religieuse classique suffers, however, from a rigid teleological perspective, coupled with a bias that one might call “neoclassicist.” According to Loukovitch, it was Pierre Corneille who “aura presque à créer de toutes pièces la vraie tragédie chrétienne” [would almost have to create Christian tragedy from scratch].14 Corneille appears for Loukovitch as a kind of demiurge, single-handedly creating Christian tragedy “[d]u chaos antérieur” [from the earlier chaos] of inchoate “pièces de circonstance” [situation plays].15 If, for Loukovitch, Corneille’s Polyeucte is the first “true” Christian tragedy, it is also the last. To be sure, Polyeucte enjoyed long-term success and a place in the French literary canon, which cannot be said for the vast majority of martyrological tragedies. Putting aside questions of taste, value, and canon formation, the problem with Loukovitch’s perspective is that “la vraie tragédie chrétienne” [true Christian tragedy] is in fact “classical tragedy:” “[n]ous n’avons pas à étudier ici Polyeucte, tragédie chrétienne, mais Polyeucte tragédie classique” [we do not have to study Polyeucte, Christian tragedy, but Polyeucte, classical tragedy].16 Loukovitch thus reduces Christianity to a thematic element of the tragedy; Polyeucte is Christian in much the same way as Horace is Roman or Œdipe mythological. On this view, religious tragedies that fail to conform to the neoclassical standard according to which Loukovitch evaluates the corpus are condemned (rightly, he might add) to the dustbin of history as feeble attempts to bring sanctity to the stage. This illustrates a pitfall inherent in the [ xvii ]

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designation religious tragedy: the assumption that, as tragedies, the plays ought to conform to a generic standard. J. S. Street, in French Sacred Drama from Bèze to Corneille, adopts a more indulgent view of religious theater, arguing that playwrights did not violate neoclassical norms due to ignorance or incompetence, but rather because the material demanded it. “[I]f many pious dramatists adopted forms that were at variance with our Classical norm, it was not necessarily . . . that they did so out of backwardness,” but that they chose forms suited to their “purposes.”17 Street thus accords “irregular” playwrights their due, but in so doing assumes that the plays are primarily expressions of piety. This approach to religious theater is problematic not only because it ends up reproducing the neoclassical bias it takes to task at the outset by measuring a diverse corpus of religious theater against “our” classical norms, but also because it imposes a static ideological framework on the corpus by assuming that the “purposes” of the playwrights were fundamentally pious. There were, of course, martyrological tragedies composed by ecclesiastic authors who, in prefatory letters and prefaces, make clear the devotional intentions of their undertaking.18 That those intentions were acknowledged and respected by the readership may be another story, however. In this book I employ the terms martyrological theater and martyrological tragedy interchangeably, with a preference for the more generic term theater in order to avoid the suggestion that these plays are neoclassical tragedies and consequently ought to be evaluated as such, according to the norms and conventions governing those tragedies that have since become canonical. In addition, both theater and tragedy here are terms of convenience, for I do not wish to suggest that martyrological theater was a cohesive genre or subgenre with its own distinctive formal criteria. The corpus is simply far too heterogeneous to constitute its own genre. Rather than seek to define a static “idea” of martyrological theater either as a subgenre of tragedy or a genre apart, I am interested in the ways in which sanctity and martyrdom were deployed by critics and playwrights as a means to explore the possibilities of representational practices that exceed the familiar framework of a secular poetics. In other words, this book is not so much about what martyrological theater is, but rather what martyrological theater does. How do religion and literary theory come together in the formulation of “belief?” How does religion underwrite the legitimation of spectacle? How does sacramental efficacy inform effective acting? How does the Eucharist account for theater’s capacity to make present otherwise absent entities? Precisely because martyrological theater crosses the boundaries between amateur and professional, provincial and Parisian, [ xviii ]

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devotional and entertaining, it constitutes a rich yet relatively unexplored site of dramatic experimentation and reflection. As Anne Teulade has recently noted in her study of religious theater, “[l]e sujet hagiographique . . . apparaît comme un remarquable moyen de réfléchir sur les potentialités du medium théâtral” [the hagiographical subject . . . appears to be a remarkable means to reflect on the potentialities of the dramatic medium].19 Teulade, looking broadly at Spanish and French hagiographical theater, goes on to show that the juxtaposition of the sacred and the secular creates a kind of shock that, anticipating Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt or “estrangement effect,” puts the spectator in a position to evaluate, rationally, the events unfolding on stage.20 This demonstration has the great merit of rehabilitating the largely forgetten corpus of hagiographical theater by proposing an alternative to the Aristotelian, neoclassical criteria according to which scholars usually evaluate it. That alternative, however, modernizes religious theater at the expense of religion: the critical impulse of the “estranged” spectator seems to announce a disenchanted modernity. My approach follows the opposite trajectory, seeking not to demonstrate the modernity of religious theater, but rather the importance of religion in the development of modern theater. It is possible to consider martyrological theater neither as a doomed attempt to adapt hagiography to an unhospitable neoclassical stage nor as another step in a march toward dechristianization, but rather as a dramatic experiment that not only helped define the contours of that stage but also yielded an alternative vision of theater, its capabilities, and its effects, that resulted from the productive meeting of theater and theology. Martyrdom and Mimesis

What this book will show is that early modern martyrological theater can and ought to be considered in dialogue with both neoclassical dramatic theory and practice and theology and devotional practices. Indeed, martyrological theater uniquely challenged the precepts of Aristotelian dramatic poetics through the representation of sanctity. In this way, martyrological tragedy raises fundamental questions about the nature of dramatic representation, about what can be represented and how. Martyrdom, from its earliest instances, was thought of as a kind of representation, an imitation of Christ whereby the martyr’s broken body retells the crucial story of salvation by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.21 The martyr does not only die for the faith, he or she reenacts or re-presents its central, incarnational mystery. In [ xix ]

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the Martyrdom of Polycarp, one of the earliest non-Biblical narratives of Christian martyrdom and a paradigmatic martyrology, the hagiographer is explicit in this regard: “we love the martyrs as . . . imitators of the Lord [mimetas tou kyriou].”22 Unlike Plato’s use of the same term, mimetas, to designate poets whose works are so many degraded copies of the ideal original, the martyred “imitators of the Lord” do not degrade the original but rather emulate it, thereby contributing to its glory.23 Indeed, Paul called upon early Christian communities be imitators or mimetai: of their stalwart leaders, of their persecuted brethren, and, ultimately, of Christ.24 Martyrdom appears to be, as Donald Kelly puts it, “a form of mimesis— imitatio Christi with a vengeance.”25 Martyrial mimesis differs, however, from the standard explanation of mimesis inherited from Plato and Aristotle. The relationship between the model (Christ) and the copy (the martyr) is not based solely on outward ressemblance, but rather on becoming: participating in the central mystery of the Incarnation. As imitators of Christ, martyrs represent a mystery that tests the limits of rational comprehension. The Son of God was crucified, died, and was buried. On the third day, he rose from the dead. It is certain, because it is absurd.26 Defying comprehension, then, martyrdom appears to be at odds with a conception of theater guided by the rule of reason. Martyrological theater exposed the limits of Aristotelian dramatic theory and challenged newly minted dramatic conventions that were founded upon a particularly rational and moralistic appreciation of that theory. In an age during which playwrights and theorists took great pains to demonstrate the conformity of their works with the prevailing theory of poetics, martyrological theater showed precisely what that Aristotelian poetics cannot adequately account for: the representation of the (Christian) sacred. Antoine Godeau, in Hercule Audiffret’s Lettres à Philandre (where he goes by the name Théopompe), remarks that we know how to portray a prince or a government minister because experience makes them knowable, “mais un Ange, comment le ferons-nous parler? Aristote, qui a donné des règles à la Comédie, n’a point prévu cet inconvénient” [but an Angel, how will make that speak? Aristotle, who has given us rules for the theater, did not foresee this drawback].27 Godeau’s argument rests on empirical foundations: if art imitates life, then the artist must necessarily first observe the subject of his work, or at the very least the type of subject. These are shaky foundations indeed, for angels had already been amply represented in literary, plastic, and dramatic arts. Perhaps the most salient feature of this critique, however, lies in its appeal to Aristotelian authority: the obvious point that the Poetics offers no prescription for the repre[ xx ]

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sentation of angels and other Christian subjects seems to limit what lies within the poet’s purview. Religious theater thus presents, in Anne Teulade’s words, “une ‘case aveugle’ de la Poétique d’Aristote qui n’en évoque pas l’existence” [a ‘blind space’ in Aristotle’s Poetics, which does not evoke its existence].28 Viewing this empty space or category (“case aveugle”) in Aristotelian poetics as a deficiency or drawback in the dramatic theory available to playwrights suggests that that space is a kind of representational “dead end,” a void. For most early modern authors and theorists of fiction only a god can create ex nihilo. But I contend that it is better to view this space as full rather than empty, and theoretically rich with potential. Rather than emphasize the failure of martyrological theater to conform to the prevailing articulation of Aristotelian poetics, I propose an emphasis on the alternative representational practices made possible by an engagement with sanctity on stage. Deploying sanctity, in other words, to think about the theater. In his insightful article, “Thinking with Saints,” Simon Ditchfield adopts the four discursive categories from Stuart Clark’s Thinking with Demons (1997)— science, history, religion, and politics—in order to show that saints informed early modern conversations about subjects from history to politics.29 To these four categories I would add a fifth: literature. Like Clark’s initial categories, there is considerable overlap between this one and the others, and the boundary between literature and, say, religion, is not always clear: Jean-Pierre Camus’s “romans dévots” or devout novels, Bossuet or Bourdaloue’s sermons, Corneille’s translations of the liturgy, and Racine’s Esther, for example, muddle the distinction between literary and religious texts. That is precisely why “thinking with saints” becomes critically necessary, both to negotiate that boundary and to locate places where it does not demarcate a limit but rather marks a fertile encounter between the sacred and the profane.30 Playwrights and critics of the seventeenth century “thought with saints” in their debates about the role of spectacle, the rules of verisimilitude and decorum, the art of acting, and the effects of dramatic representation. The French Muses, then, may not have been “toutes chrestiennes” [wholly Christian], but neither were they totally secular. Each of the following chapters addresses a particular encounter between sanctity and the stage. The first chapter investigates what I call “the separation of church and stage:” the point, reiterated throughout the seventeenth century in both anti- and pro-theatrical texts, that the pulpit and the proscenium are diametrically opposed. In this chapter, I examine the myth of theater’s ritual origins as it was evoked in the memory of the Confrérie de la Passion, whose exclusive rights to the Hôtel de Bourgogne came at the price of abandoning their religious [ xxi ]

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repertoire. In doing so, I demonstrate that theater’s reformers, foremost among them François Hédelin, abbé d’Aubignac (1604–1676), sought to create a secular stage, absolved from the dramatic sin of blending piety with performance. However much reformers declared that the stage was nothing but an honest entertainment with no claims on the Church’s territory, they were at pains to account for the persistence of religious subjects on stage. Religion thus haunted the stage. But it also haunted dramatic theory, as I show in the second part of the chapter. This is particularly the case in the concept of “poetic faith,” which must be distinguished from religious faith. We cannot, I argue, fully appreciate the verisimilitude so central to early modern fiction (both dramatic and otherwise) without taking theology into account. By showing the centrality of religion to key dramatic concepts, I offer a corrective to the view according to which French theater was a wholly secular, absoutist enterprise. In the second chapter, I turn toward the place of spectacle in martyrological theater. For early modern playwrights, martyrologies offered a seemingly never-ending treasury of variations upon the theme of spectacular suffering. Despite Aristotle’s hesitation to include spectacle in the playwright’s art (Poetics 1453b1–8), martyrs are, as Daniel Boyarin has noted, exemplary of those deaths en toi phaneroi or “in full view” constitutive of tragic pathos.31 But seventeenthcentury injunctions against bloodying the stage made the visual representation of a martyr’s suffering nearly impossible, at least in the professional theaters of Paris. While most playwrights had recourse to hypotyposis, the verbal account of a spectacular death that took place off stage, others transmuted the spectacle of bodily suffering into a kind of “total work of art” that incorporated stage machinery and music. In this chapter, I investigate the central place of witnessing in both religion and theater. Focusing on the brazen bull from Desfontaines’s Le Martyre de Saint Eustache, I show that the poetic reorganization of horror into beauty is analogous to the martyrological transformation of pain into pleasure, both of which seek to reorient the spectator’s gaze to aesthetic or apologetic ends. The visual dynamics of martyrological spectacle thereby offer another way to think about early modern theater more generally. The third chapter focuses on the trope of the converted actor in two tragedies about the martyred actor Genesius. The complexity of these tragedies, in which an actor plays a pagan actor who converts while playing a catechumen undergoing baptism, offers an especially rich site to investigate the dynamic interplay of theology and theater. Rather than opt to read the plays as primarily religious (“comédies de dévotion”) or theatrical (“comédies de comédiens”) in vocation, I [ xxii ]

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argue that the two vocations need not be at odds. The actor’s conversion to Christianity through acting raises essential dramatic questions, which happen also to be central sacramental questions: How do we differentiate between the real and the feigned? Can the feigned become real? Focusing Rotrou’s Le Véritable saint Genest and Desfontaines’s L’Illustre Comédien, I demonstrate that the mechanics of the actor’s conversion through performance reflect sacramental dynamics. Given that the the pagan actor converted through performance, I show that the sacramental dynamic at work recalls the theological distinction between sacramental efficacy ex opere operantis (from the work of the worker), that is, according to the attitude of the officiant, and ex opere operato (from the work worked), according to the performance of the rite alone. Genest’s conversion takes place ex opere operato, where grace is conferred by virtue of the performance itself, not by virtue of the participants’ spiritual state. This in turn allows us to reevaluate the efficacy of performance in sacramental terms. D’Aubignac’s oft-cited dictum “Parler, c’est Agir” [to speak is to act] does more than anticipate twentieth-century linguistic theory; it endows the dramatic word with the power to effect change in the world and thus shares in sacramental efficacy. I conclude, in the fourth and final chapter, with the most well-known of the martyrological tragedies, Corneille’s Polyeucte. Here the focus shifts from the actor to the spectator, in particular Corneille’s concern for the “effects” of his tragedy on the “diverse minds” that compose the audience. I do not dispute the tragedy’s conformity with neoclassical norms; unlike Street, however, I see Corneille’s success in “conveying the religious signficiance of sacred material” not “in the Classical form,” nor even against it, but rather alongside it.32 Focusing on the radical conversion of Polyeucte’s wife Pauline, which, Corneille admits, serves as a subsitute for the representation of the martyr’s death, I argue that Corneille taps into an alternative means to convey the religious significance of martyrdom. In this way, Corneille does not violate neoclassical norms but exploits a blind spot—Teulade’s “case aveugle”—in Aristotelian dramatic theory, which neither prescribes nor proscribes the innovate manner in which Corneille represents Polyeucte’s martyrdom. I argue that Pauline’s conversion recalls the sacrament of the Eucharist, during which the miraculously transformed wafer represents Christ’s sacrifice, much as Pauline’s transformation represents that of her husband. In this way, I demonstrate that it is not only possible but perhaps also preferable to reconsider dramatic representation, whereby the invisible is made present (visibly or otherwise), according to the theological concept of incarnation.

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1 THE SEPARATION OF CH URCH AND STAGE

Original Saints: The Instruments of the Passion on the Hôtel de Bourgogne

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tourists can visit the site of the Hôtel de Bourgogne on rue Etienne Marcel in the 2nd arrondissement, where they may glimpse the rather unremarkable Tour Jean-sansPeur, the last vestige of Paris’s first professional theater. The building itself had been repurposed during the sixteenth century and underwent several renovations during the course of its history, before being replaced by a leather market in 1784. Nineteenth-century construction projects uncovered the tower, which was named a national monument and subsequently renovated. Today, it is all that remains of the Hôtel de Bourgogne. Seventeenth-century spectators glimpsed a very different kind of vestige above the theater’s principal entrance: a stone escutcheon, held aloft by two angels, bearing a bas-relief representing the instruments of Christ’s passion—a strange welcome to the theater! This was the insignia of the Confrérie de la Passion.1 Founded in 1402 for the purpose of performing religious drama, in 1548 the Confrérie acquired the exclusive rights to the Hôtel de Bourgogne, but this came at a steep price: the same parliamentary decree that granted its monopoly also proscribed the performance of religious drama. The reason was that the performance of religious plays had become so coarse as to veer dangerously close to blasphemy. Deprived of its repertoire, the Confrérie leased the space to other theater companies, acquiring a permanent lessee, the Comédiens du Roi, in 1634. The Confrérie continued to exist as the proprietor of the Hôtel de Bourgogne until Louis XIV had it dissolved in 1676. URIOUS

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For some, the escutcheon representing the Passion served only to “brand” the Hôtel as the sole property of the Confrérie. The celebrated actor Luigi Riccoboni (1676–1753), better known by his stage name Lélio, took great pains to save the stone from destruction during eighteenth-century renovations, but disavowed its religious significance, writing that it “n’était qu’une inscription muette qui désignait quels étaient les maîtres du fond, & les possesseurs du Privilège exclusif de jouer ou de faire jouer à Paris des Comédies ou des Tragédies profanes” [was only a silent inscription that indicated the owners and possessors of the exclusive rights to perform or have performed secular comedies and tragedies].2 The adjective “profane” here is important; driving home another point he makes that the escutcheon “does not at all authorize” [n’autorise point du tout] the idea that the theater was initially destined for the performance of religious drama. Considering that the Confrérie had not performed religious plays since 1548 and that it had essentially ceased to exist as an active theater company from that time onward, Riccoboni’s assessment is not entirely inaccurate. Nevertheless, the Confrérie’s insignia predated its acquisition of the theater and so does recall the company’s original mission and repertoire. Riccoboni’s contemporary Jean-Aymar Piganiol de la Force (1673–1753), who is best known for his detailed descriptions of French cities and towns, notes that the escutcheon had been placed above the door of the Hôtel “pour marquer qu’il était uniquement destiné à la représentation des pièces saintes” [to show that it was uniquely destined for the performance of religious plays].3 This remark is, like Riccoboni’s, partially correct: the company was founded for the performance of religious plays, althought when it acquired exclusive rights to the Hôtel, it ceased to perform them. Piganiol de la Force’s emphasis on the Confrérie’s religious repertoire seems to remind readers of the sacred origins of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, whereas Riccoboni’s emphasis on property rights seeks to diminish the importance of those origins. Evidently, what matters more than the historical accuracy of such accounts are the symbolic implications of the instruments of Christ’s passion above the entrance to Paris’s foremost professional theater. How each author interprets the insignia and which episodes of the Confrérie’s history he chooses to recover together indicate that what is at stake is nothing other than the boundary between religion and theater. In fact, for the preacher Léon de Saint-Jean (1600–1671), whether or not religious plays were actually performed at the Hôtel was quite beside the point. The theater, as the diaboli ecclesia or devil’s assembly, is opposed to God’s church.4 Consequently, placing the symbol of Christianity’s central, salvific mystery on the doorway to a theater is nothing short of sacrilegious. In a sermon [2]

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preached in 1665 in the Church of Saint Germain-l’Auxerrois, the Carmelite priest transformed the bas-relief into the very emblem of hypocrisy: “l’image de la passion de J. CHR. Sur l’Hôtel de Bourgogne; la Croix, sur la porte des Comédies” [the image of Jesus Christ’s passion on the Hôtel de Bourgogne; the Cross, on the door of the Theater] gives a false air of respectability and ecclesiastical sanction to criminal activity.5 Whether a simple trademark, reminder of a religious past, or emblem of hypocrisy, the escutcheon bearing the Confrérie de la Passion’s insignia draws our attention to the Hôtel de Bourgogne as a multilayered site whose religious origins were buried beneath parliamentary decrees against performing the sacred and a substantial repetroire of secular theater. The memory of the Confrérie’s original repertoire ghosts—to borrow a term from theater theorist Marvin Carlson—the Hôtel de Bourgogne. Theater spaces, Carlson argues, are “visually haunted by . . . evocations of their cultural tradition,” evocations such as the busts of great playwrights and actors that so often adorn national theaters.6 The theater’s past thus interpellates the present, with the capacity to influence the spectator’s reception of the performance. The Hôtel de Bourgogne, which, along with the rival Théâtre du Marais founded in 1634, would come to represent a modern, regulated, Aristotelian, and, above all, secular theater, was in this way “visually haunted” by the escutcheon above the doorway. The sacred subsists, even as playwrights and theorists in the seveteenth century endeavored to emancipate the stage from any religious vocation. As the aforementioned examples show, the bas-relief featuring the instruments of Christ’s Passion that sat above the Hôtel de Bourgogne’s principal entrance recalled the religious origins of neoclassical French theater (even if, as in the case of Riccoboni, that memory was recalled only to be refuted). It thus serves to remind us that the secularization of the stage occurred gradually and imperfectly, that the relationship between plank and pulpit, performance and prayer, stage property and sacramental, is complex and intertwined. We cannot, of course, know with certainty to what degree the theater’s history participated in the early modern spectators’ theater experience. We do know, however, that it served as a stubborn reminder that the wall of separation between the Church and the Stage imagined by dramatic reformers and antitheatrical writers alike did not always exist and even as it was erected, it was porous at best. In general the public moved easily between the theater and the church, with the exception of some theatergoers who publicly and vociferously renounced the pleasures of the stage after undergoing religious conversions (most notably, the Prince de Conti, Molière’s patron-cum-persecutor). Madame de Sévigné is a famous [3]

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example of the coexistence of wordly entertainment and spiritual edification: the same spectator who rapturously wept during the performance of Racine’s Bérénice (1670) enthusiastically listened to the sermons of Bossuet and Bourdaloue and assiduously read the works of Augustine. It was this easy coming and going that Léon de Saint-Jean and other ecclesiastics attacked in their sermons and guides, and not only because they saw it as dangerous to the soul of their flock. It proved bothersome for preachers who observed that their audience attended sermons as though the pulpit were a stage, effectively bringing the theatrical sensibilities into the church and making a mockery of the Word. Conversely, theatergoers brought their awareness of liturgical conventions, devotional practices, and religious vocabulary into the theater. According to an apocryphal but no less telling anecdote, the audience disrupted a performance of Cyrano de Bergerac’s tragedy La Mort d’Agrippine (1654) because the play’s alleged blasphemy was simply too much to bear. The offending line? “Frappons, voilà l’Hostie!” [Strike, there’s the Host!] The term hostie (from the Latin hostia, or “sacrifice”), to which we will return in chapter 4, designated not only the Eucharistic wafer but also, and commonly in poetry, any sacrificial victim. On one reading, then, the line simply means “strike the victim.” Yet the audience, aware of Cyrano’s reputation as a materialist freethinker, could not help but hear “strike the Host,” imbuing the word with religious significance and conjuring up the specter of Eucharistic desecration. enfin, lors que Séjan résolu à faire périr Tibére, qu’il regardoit déja comme sa victime, vint à dire à la fin de la 4. Scéne du 4. Acte Frapons, voila l’hostie, [des badaux] ne manquerent pas de s’écrier: Ah le méchant, ah l’athée! Comme il parle du saint Sacrement! 7 [At last, when Séjan, who had resolved to kill Tibère and already viewed him as his victim, comes to say at the end of the fouth scene of the fourth act Strike, there’s the host, the onlookers did not fail to cry out: Oh, the villain! Oh, the atheist! How he speaks of the Blessed Sacrament!]

Although the episode is most likely fabricated, there is little doubt that Cyrano, who relished procative semantic ambiguities, intended precisely this confusion as a [4]

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means to chip away at the Church’s authority while deflecting accusations of sacrilege by hiding safely behind the word’s nonreligious meaning.8 What is important about this anecdote is the way that it calls attention to a moment of transgression. This is transgression not only in the sense that the playwright overstepped his bounds by treating religious material on stage—“ce n’est point au théâtre à parler de ces matières” [it is not for the theater to speak about these matters], as Molière wrote in the preface to Tartuffe—but also from the point of view of the audience members who interpreted the line in a religious sense, bringing religious sensibilities to bear upon a secular stage. In Of Borders and Thresholds, Michael Kobialka writes that [t]heater history draws attention to the multiple shifts and transformations in the relationships among ideology, power, culture, and thought, and, in particular, to this thought, or its material presence, which ceases to support or move in the element of historico-political identity. . . . It was this thought that engaged in the practice of signaling the places where borders were suddenly erected in the process of conscious or accidental crossings performed by the actors on stage and the words they enunciated.9

The Cyrano anecdote calls attention to just such a crossing: the border between what theater may represent (history and mythology) and what it must not (Christian religion) suddenly came into being thanks to a particular convergence of acting and spectatorship. An actor uttering the line “frappons . . . l’Hostie” is not by itself enough to constitute a transgression; the audience had to draw attention to its blasphemous nature. Whether the actor or Cyrano intended to blaspheme is beside the point. A boundary appeared at the very moment it had been crossed. Quoting Brian Massumi, Kobialka writes that “crossing actualizes the boundary.”10 Religious theater, performed on the professional, Parisian stage, thus transgresses and in so doing draws attention to the boundary separating the ritual origins of the theater and its modern, secular incarnation as entertainment.

Secular Absolution: “La Comédie n’est plus qu’un divertissement”

The boundary between Church and Stage, however porous in practice, gained significant theoretical ground from the 1620s through the 1640s as playwrights and critics sought to purge the stage of its medieval excesses and promote a vision of the theater as a rational, codified, pleasing, and morally profitable art form. A key but underappreciated component of the push to reform the stage was the [5]

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insistence that the theater, despite its ancient ritual origins, had by the seventeenth century become a wholly secular art form. This position was above all strategic. Antitheatrical writers followed Augustine, Chrysostom, Cyprian, and Tertullian in arguing that the theater was the seat of sin.11 Protheatrical writers therefore took great pains to demonstrate that contemporary theater was nothing like the ritualistic and debauched spectacles condemned by the Church Fathers. A constant refrain in protheatrical writing was that modern theater, guided by reason and morally useful, was a form of “honest entertainment.” By distancing the theater from its ritual origins and relinquishing any claim to represent the sacred, protheatrical writers sought to absolve the stage before the eyes of its harshest religious critics. Under the patronage of Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642), French theater flourished.12 Along with the Hôtel de Bourgogne, Paris boasted two additional theater spaces of importance: the Théâtre du Marais (1634) and Richelieu’s own Palais Cardinal (1639). In 1641, Louis XIII issued an edict exonerating actors from the crime of infamy (“infâmie”), a relic of Roman law that deprived actors of a range of civil rights, such as filing a lawsuit or testifying in court. (They remained, however, “infâmes” in the eyes of the Church.) At Richelieu’s behest, François Hédelin, abbé D’Aubignac (1604–1676) began composing a treatise on the theater—La Pratique du Théâtre, which appeared in 1657—and a “project for the rehabilitation” of the theater that would not be published in his lifetime. In these texts, D’Aubignac makes the case for a well-regulated and morally suitable theater that, in its rigorous application of the rule of reason, would distinguish itself both from the irregular mystery plays of the past and the national theaters of its neighbors. For the reform-minded D’Aubignac, the absence of religious phenomena and religious language were among the most salient distinguishing features of a modern, French theater. In the Pratique, he writes that “la Tragédie n’était en son instution qu’une Hymne de religion Païenne” [tragedy was at its origin nothing but a hymn of the pagan religion], reprising a familiar myth of origins that links the birth of tragedy with the ritual sacrifice of a goat to Dionysus.13 In “Des discours de piété” [On Pious Speech], a chapter of the Pratique that would not be printed until 1728, D’Aubignac further explains the ancient ritual origins of the stage and measures the distance between ancient and modern theater in terms of the absence of ritual: whereas ancient theater was inextricably tied to religious pratice, modern theater had no part in religion. “Nous avons dit que la Tragédie et la Comédie ont été des Actes de religion parmi les païens, n’étant au commencement qu’une hymne qui se chantait avec danse devant les Autels de Bacchus” [We [6]

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have said that tragedy and comedy were acts of religion among the pagans, being at their inception nothing but a hymn that was sung with dancing before the altars of Dionysus], he writes.14 Returning to ancient sources such as Aristotle’s Poetics and ancient models such as Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus in order to rehabilitate the French stage does not mean, however, that tragedy should return to its ritual origins and perform the sacred mysteries of the Christian religion. Instead, the ancients bequeathed formal principles and models according to which tragedy could be codified as a literary genre and, as such, a work of fiction rather than faith. Thus, despite the ritual origins of tragedy, D’Aubignac counsels playwrights against composing Christian plays: “je ne conseillerais pas néanmoins à Nos poètes de suivre cet exemple ni de traiter incidemment au Théâtre les mystères de notre Religion: La Comédie n’est plus maintenant qu’un divertissment public; elle n’a plus de part aux choses saintes et ne peut souffrir ce mélange sans profanation” [I would not advise that our poets follow that example nor incidentally treat the mysteries of our religion on the stage: the theater is no longer anything but a public entertainment; it no longer has any part in sacred things and cannot allow this mix without desecration].15 In the “Projet pour la réhabilitation du théâtre” [Project for the rehabilitation of the theater] he goes further, envisioning a royal decree enshrining the theater as a “divertissement public” [public entertainment].16 The separation between ancient and modern tragedy is clear: tragedy may indeed have been ritual, but it is no longer anything other than entertainment. D’Aubignac’s interdiction is straightforward: one ought not mix the pleasures of the stage and the mysteries of the Christian faith. The reason why is, however, less straightforward. If the Church Fathers opposed the stage because it was tied to false religion, then a Christian theater should pass muster with ecclesiastical authorities. From a religious point of view, the performance of Christian subjects on the reformed French stage risks “profanation” [desecration], using religious things for unintended purposes. As nothing more than a public entertainment the stage hardly seems an appropriate place for the performance of sanctity, lest religion lose its gravity and become a kind of pleasant diversion. “il reste toujours dans l’esprit des auditeurs,” he writes of the representation of religious plays, “beaucoup d’impressions dangereuses, capables d’affaiblir la piété des uns et de flatter l’impiété des autres” [There remains in the minds of the spectators many dangerous impressions capable of weakening the piety of some and encouraging the impiety of others].17 D’Aubignac does not explain how this happens, though it seems safe to say that in the context of a public theater, where spectators pay to be entertained, pleasure may well take precedence over pious thoughts. [7]

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Yet it is not only religion that risks desecration in the performance of religious plays. The theater may contaminate the cult of the saints, for example, by weakening faith or encouraging impiety, but the cult of saints may also contaminate the stage, ruining the “faith” that the spectators have in the fictional world unfolding before their eyes and consequently diminishing the pleasure and profit of the whole enterprise. For D’Aubignac the theater is not the place for preaching: exhorting the spectators to behave virtuously or emulate the lives of the saints would “smell too much like preaching” [sent trop la prédication] and ruin the spectators’ enjoyment of the play. With a taste for hyperbole, D’Aubignac concludes: “je prétends qu’un seul vers, une seule parole qui mêlera quelque pensée de religion dans la Comédie, blessera l’imagination des Spectateurs, leur fera froncer le sourcil, et leur donnera quelque dégoût” [I claim that a single line, a single word that mixes some religious thought in with the theater will injure the spectators’ imagination, cause them to frown, and give them some distaste].18 In other words, D’Aubignac’s plea for the separation of Church and Stage does not only guarantee the sanctity of religion, thereby forestalling potential religious critiques, it also (and, for the protheatrical camp, more importantly) guarantees the “sanctity,” as it were, of the stage. In spite of the theoretical separation between theater and religion, religious theater was performed and read, both on and off the reformed Parisian stage. D’Aubignac may argue that contemporary French theater is a wholly secular enterprise, but he must also admit the success of the recent (that is, at the time of writing) experiment in religious tragedy: Ce n’est pas que depuis ce temps [de la Confrérie] les histoires Saintes en aient été bannies sans retour, car elles ne l’ont pas absolumment quitté. . . . Elles paraissent même encore assez souvent sur les théâtres publics, où elles n’ont pas une audience moins favorable que les Aventures des Héros de la fable et de l’histoire. Et depuis peu d’années Barreau mit sur celui de l’hôtel de Bourgogne le Martyre de Saint Eustache, et Corneille ceux de Polyeucte et de Théodore. 19 [It is not that since then sacred stories were banished [from the stage] irrevocably, for they never entirely left. . . . They still appear relatively often on the public stage, where they attract no less favorable an audience than the heroic adventures of fiction and history. Not long ago Baro had Le Martyre de Saint Eustache performed on the planks of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and Corneille the martyrdoms of Polyeucte and Théodore] [8]

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Religion never completely left the theater and in fact religious plays featured on the playbills of Parisian theaters for a decade. D’Aubignac’s “Discours de piété” is thus fraught with a tension between, on the one hand, an ideal according to which theater and religion remain separate, and, on the other, the reality of religious plays. Provincial Theater and Closet Drama

If the continued performance of religious plays on the Parisian stage surprised D’Aubignac by contradicting his claim that the modern stage was a secular space, their existence in the provinces was less controversial. Religious plays were in fact massive hits outside Paris. The tradition of mystery plays survived into the seventeenth century, as Jacques Chocheyras’s studies of religious theater in Savoie and Dauphiné have shown.20 Other religious plays, more in line with the prevailing dramaturgical conventions, were produced in the provinces. Parisian plays, too, found their way to the provinces. They were performed and subsequently published in important provincial cities including Rouen and Lyon. Even after the Parisian vogue for religious drama waned, the plays continued to enjoy success beyond the capital; Corneille’s Théodore (1645), a miserable failure at the Théâtre du Marais, found appreciative audiences in the provinces21 and Desfontaines’s Martyre de saint Eustache (1643) was performed in Nantes in 1649 and Dijon in 1668.22 In at least one locality, the performance of religious drama has continued uninterrupted to the present day: in the commune of Alise-Sainte-Reine, named for Saint Regina (“Sainte Reine”) a third-century virgin martyr. Historically, each August, the villagers took part in a ritual procession leading the saint’s relics from Flavigny to Alise-Ste-Reine and crowned the festivities with a mystery play representing the life and martyrdom of their patron saint, a tradition that is today a major cultural attraction in the region.23 The current version of the play dates to 1877, but the subject was popular enough in the seventeenth century to generate no fewer than five different versions: Chariot de triomphe tiré par deux aigles by Hughes Millotet (1661), Le Triomphe de l’amour divin de sainte Reine (1671), Le Martyre de la glorieuse sainte Reine d’Alize, Tragédie by Claude Ternet (1680), Le Victoire spirituelle de la glorieuse sainte Reine sur le tyran Olibre by Paul-Alexis Blessebois (1686), and Le Martyre de sainte Reine d’Alise, Tragédie by “un religieux” of the Flavigny Abbey (1687). The relatively vast repertoire for a regional saint suggests that the authors sought to capitalize on popular devotion. In addition to their subject matter, all the seventeenth-century Regina plays share the same generic [9]

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designation: “tragedy.” This could have been a means to take advantage of tragedy’s prestige as a literary genre. But it could also reveal a desire to modernize the ancient mystery play, bringing it more or less in line with the rules of neoclassical tragedy that had become standard by the 1660s. This dramatic standardization is also manifest in the plays’ division into five acts, the use of alexandrins, and other stylistic features. While the religious theater of the seventeenth century may have shared its content with the older tradition of the mystery play, it distinguished itself through its adherence to dramatic norms. While many provincial religious plays were certainly performed, some were apparently intended only for reading. One example of a hagiographical closet drama is Dipné, Infante d’Irlande (1668), by François d’Avre. In the prefatory letter, dedicated to Eléonor de Rohan, a Benedictine abbess of some literary talent, the author writes: “Je viens vous convier, Madame, au spectacle sacré d’un Théâtre Chrétien, où vous pouvez donner une assistance religieuse sans sortir de votre Cellule, & sans distraire vos plus dévotes occupations des objets qui font votre Oratoire” [I come to welcome you, Madame, to the sacred spectacle of a Christian Theater, which you can religiously attend without leaving your cell and without distracting your most devout occupations from the objects of your prayer].24 Clearly, the play was not written to be performed, but to be read as a closet drama or indeed as a kind of devotional practice complementary to the abbess’s prayers. The author continues: “vous n’y trouverez que l’action d’une Cellule animée, d’un Oratoire vivant, d’une Sanctuaire mouvant” [you will find here [that is, in the play] the activity of an animated cell, a living oratory, a moving sanctuary].25 This is an interesting take on the common image of theater as animation or as a “speaking picture.” For François d’Avre, Christian theater is not the animation of a historical or mythological episode, but of pious activity itself. The monastic cell, the oratory, and the sanctuary all come to life in the dramatic representation of Dymphna’s martyrdom. As such, Dipné is better characterized as dramatized hagiography rather than hagiographical theater. Consequently, there is little respect for dramatic conventions such as the prohibition of murder on stage or divine apparitions. In the last act, Dipné’s father, enraged at her profession of faith, threatens to kill her if she doesn’t recant: “Regarde cette dague, & si ton coeur s’obstine / Je l’iray déchirer au fonds de ta poitrine” [Behold this dagger, & if your heart remains obstinate / I will cut it out from within your chest].26 When she inflexibly declares “Je suis Chrétienne” [I am a Christian], her father kills her and a stage direction indicates that she dies (“tombant morte”), uttering “Jesus.”27 The on-stage murder violates the rule of decorum, which normally banished such [ 10 ]

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acts of violence to the wings. Afterward, Dipné reappears “en une nuée de gloire” [in a cloud of glory] a kind of literal deus ex machina where the newly haloed saint returns to the stage to guarantee a Christian reading of the plot: Dipné’s death was an ephemeral triumph for her angry father, for her miraculous apparition ultimately demonstrates God’s power over temporal authority. Finally, in a scene that calls to mind Pauline’s encounter with her father Félix in scene five of act five in Corneille’s Polyeucte, Dipné reproaches her father for his cruelty but adds that his regret is the first step toward his own conversion and, ultimately, a felicitous reunion with his daughter. Another hagiographical play that seems to have been composed with devotional reading in mind is Claude Ternet’s Martyre de la glorieuse sainte Reine d’Alize (1680), dedicated to the bishop of Autun, in whose diocese Saint Regina was born and martyred. The title page features a small engraving of the saint, prayerfully kneeling beneath an executioner’s raised sword. Her head is already haloed and an angel appears in the upper righthand corner, from which rays of divine grace emanate. This illustration suggests that the play—notwithstanding its designation as a tragedy—is perhaps more a work of devotion than diversion. The second page dispells any doubt concerning the play’s devotional purpose: a full-page illustration of Saint Regina with the words “Sainte Reine, priés pour nous” [Saint Regina, pray for us] inscribed below. Unlike the frontispieces of, for example, Racine’s tragedies, which often illustrate a particularly spectacular moment from the tragedy, the illustration of Saint Regina invites the reader’s active engagement with the subject of the play. There is no asking Hippolyte to intercede on behalf of, say, amorous young men, but the faithful are enjoined to call upon the intercession of the saints. The inclusion of a votive image, usually intended for private devotion, is remarkable in a play.28 Like Dipné, Le Martyre de la glorieuse sainte Reine culminates in a spectacular fashion that, on stage, would contravene the rules of verisimilitude and decorum. An angel in the shape of a dove appears, bearing a crown, to encourage Reine during her torment. After her execution, angels “emportent visiblement son âme au Ciel” [visibly carry her soul to the sky].29 The people express their awe at this angelic apparition, note (a bit too hastily) that the saint’s blood cures all manner of illness, and depart to embalm the body. The final words of the play echo the frontispiece prayer card: “Vierge qui maintenant auprés de vôtre Epoux, / Avés tant de pouvoir, aïes pitié de nous; / Et faites qu’avec vous, & les Esprits fidéles, / Nous soïons joüissans des clartés éternelles” [Virgin, now seated next to your Spouse, / Who have so much power, take pity on us: / May we, with you and the [ 11 ]

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faithful souls, / enjoy eternal light].30 By ending with an intercessory prayer to Saint Regina that, thanks to the choir’s first-person plural, both incorporates the reader and recalls the votive image that precedes the text, Ternet’s tragedy is both drama and ritual, (aesthetic) pleasure and devout practice.

“L’air de la fable”: Christian Theater and Dramatic Theory

Later critics echoed D’Aubignac’s reservations regarding religious drama and indeed amplified the critique into an outright condemnation. The “legislator of Parnassus” Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711), in his Art poétique (1674), criticizes the experiment of religious theater as a misguided attempt to innovate. The Art poétique, a long didactic poem divided into four “chants” [cantos], tells the story of French belles lettres and lays out the principles of neoclassical doctrine. Modern authors, he contended, ought to follow in the footsteps of the celebrated authors of Antiquity in order to produce works that, like those of their forebears, would stand the test of time. Departure from ancient models could grant immediate success but was unlikely to guarantee lasting appeal. Boileau places Christian theater within the larger context of the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, which pitted supporters of modern invention against defenders of tradition.31 Like D’Aubignac before him, Boileau recognizes the Confrérie de la Passion’s performance of religious drama as an important chapter in the history of French theater, but he refers to the company dismissively, as “une troupe grossière” “de pèlerins” [a vulgar troop of pilgrims]. Moreover, he views its project as the product of simpleminded piety rather than a worthy artistic endeavor. The company, “sottement zélée en sa simplicité / Joua les saints, la Vierge et Dieu par piété” [naively zealous in its simplicity / played the saints, the Virgin, and God with piety].32 For Boileau, the French stage owed its prestige to the rigorous application of the precepts of Aristotle and Horace and to the adoption of mythological or ancient historical subjects. In short, it owed its greatness to the emulation of the Ancients. It is thus with certain failure that poets endeavored to bring sanctity to the stage: C’est donc bien vainement que nos auteurs déçus, Bannissant de leurs vers ces ornements reçus, Pensent faire agir Dieu, ses saints et ses prophètes, Comme ces dieux éclos du cerveau des poètes; [ 12 ]

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Mettent à chaque pas le lecteur en enfer; N’offrent rien qu’Astaroth, Belzébuth, Lucifer. De la foi d’un chrétien les mystères terribles D’ornements égayés ne sont point susceptibles: L’Evangile à l’esprit n’offre de tous côtés Que pénitence à faire, et tourments mérités; Et de vos fictions le mélange coupable Même à ses vérités donne l’air de la fable. 33 [It is thus in vain that our deceived authors, Banishing from their verse those received ornaments, Think to bring to life God, his saints and prophets, Like those deities born from the heads of poets; Every step of the way drive the reader toward hell, Offer nothing but Astatorh, Beelzebub, and Lucifer. The terrible mysteries of the Christian faith Cannot be brightened by ornaments: The Gospel everywhere offers the mind Only penitence and torment And the guilty mélange of your fictions Gives even its truths an air of falsehood.]

Turning away from the classical tradition (“ces ornements reçus”) in favor of Christian novelty results, for Boileau, in a diabolical perversion of Christian mysteries. The appearance of the demons Astaroth, Beelzebub, and Lucifer in this passage reactivates a patristic antitheatrical trope but in a different and surprising context. Tertullian referred the the theater as diaboli ecclesia or “the devil’s assembly” and Augustine linked the theater to polytheism and consequently to the demons masquerading as divinities. Whereas, for the Church Fathers, pagan theater was the devil’s playground, for Boileau, it is purportedly Christian theater that, far from edifying the spectator, leads him or her down the path to perdition. The problem lies not simply the representation of religious subjects—indeed, for the Catholic Boileau, representation in the form of the sacraments is vitally necessary for full participation in the life of the Church—but rather the representation of God, saints, and prophets as though they were the divinities of mythology, mere inventions of poetic fancy (“comme ces dieux éclos du cerveau des poètes”).34 In Boileau’s estimation, a playwright may freely employ the fables of Antiquity precisely because the divinities of old are nothing more than fictions; saints, on the [ 13 ]

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other hand, lie beyond the playwright’s purview because they are believed to be real. Moreover, the “terrible” mysteries of the Christian faith demanded a sober and reverent representation that does not befit the stage, which seeks to delight and entertain (“nous charmer,” “nous divertir”). In condemning religious theater, the “Ancien” Bolieau found common ground with the “Moderne” Saint-Evremond, who, in an essay titled “De la tragédie ancienne et modern” [On ancient and modern tragedy], denounces the introduction of saints onto the stage. Saint-Evremond (1613–1703) opens his essay by firmly planting his feet in “Moderne” territory, praising Corneille’s dramatic innovations alongside scientific and philosophical innovations: “Descartes et Gassendi ont découvert des vérités qu’Aristote ne connaissait pas; Corneille a trouvé des beautés pour le Théâtre qui ne lui étaient pas connues” [Descartes and Gassendi discovered truths that Aristotle did not know; Corneille discovered beauties for the theater that were unknown to him].35 In other words, Corneille’s greatness, according to Saint-Evremond, lies in his departure from ancient authority. In at least one instance, however, Corneille strayed too far. With Polyeucte, “ce qui eût fait un beau sermon faisait une misérable tragédie” [what would have made a beautiful sermon made a pitiful tragedy], Saint-Evremond mockingly writes.36 The tragedy’s defects—Polyeucte is too virtuous a hero, the zeal of Polyeucte and Néarque is fanatical—belong to the pulpit. Place is crucial. Translated to the stage, “les choses saintes perdent beaucoup de la religieuse qualité qu’on leur doit, quand on les représente sur le Théâtre” [sacred things lose much of the religious quality we owe them when they are represtened on stage].37 Saint-Evremond argues that would be advantageous to freethinkers, who, in the public and secular space of the theater, would have the liberty to mock religion openly.38 Saint-Evremond even goes so far as to suggest that the pious, too, would have their faith weakened by religious theater. Believing what is seen on stage is fictional, “on en douterait bientôt dans la Bible, parce qu’on n’en croirait rien à la Comédie” [one would soon disbelieve it in the Bible, because one would not believe it at all in the theater].39 To be sure, the essay’s tone is spirited and the author was critical of superstition and rigid dogma, but the suggestion that religious theater might disabuse spectators of their erstwhile faith is too widespread to be dismissed.40 D’Aubignac worried that spectators might come to view sanctity “comme un jeu de poésie” [like a poetic game].41 Puget de la Serre (1594–1665) placed a prefatory letter addressed to “esprits forts” [freethinkers] in his martyrological play Sainte Catherine (1643), admonishing them to “peser [leurs] paroles” [weigh their words].42 Boileau saw religious theater as guilty (“coupable”) of giving truth the appearance of falsehood— [ 14 ]

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“l’air de la fable.” And Saint-Evremond suggested that one might begin to doubt sacred truths once one sees them exposed on the stage. Even Pierre Corneille seemed to share the concern that dramatic— fictional—representations of saints might have deleterious spiritual consequences. In the Abrégé du martyre de saint Polyeucte that he appended to Polyeucte martyr (1643), he announces that the “ingénieuse tissure des fictions avec la vérité” [ingenious entwining of fiction and truth] is the “plus beau secret de la poésie” [poetry’s most beautiful secret].43 This is the very definition of verisimilitude as it was understood in the seventeenth century: neither truth nor fiction, the verisimilar plot combines both such that everything that happens appears to be true and consequently believable. The spectator’s belief, or better, faith, that the events taking place on stage are (provisionally and temporarily) true was essential to early modern dramatic poetics. As Jean Chapelain (1595–1674) put it, “la foi est d’absolue nécessité en poésie” [faith is absolutely necessary in poetry].44 Without it, the spectator would remain indifferent to the fictional story unfolding on stage and would fail to gain any moral benefit, let alone pleasure, from the play. In the Abrégé, Corneille distinguishes two different effects of this faith: some spectators are so easily persuaded by verisimilitude that they take all of the tragedy’s events to be true and others who, “mieux avertis de notre artifice” [better informed of our artifice], regard the entire play as “une aventure de roman” [an episode from a novel].45 However crude this assessment of the public (there was certainly a lot more nuance in actual spectatorship), it nevertheless reveals a serious concern for the spectator’s ability to distinguish truth from falsehood on the stage. In most plays, the effects of either attitude would be relatively innocuous. Consider, for example, the invented character Sabine in Corneille’s Horace. Whether a spectator believes that Sabine really existed and played a role in the conflict between Alba and Rome or, conversely, that Curiace and Horace are equally fictional is of little consequence. Such errors might discredit one’s claims to know anything about Roman history, but they do not jeopardize the soul. “En cette rencontre” [In this encounter], however, between sacred truth and secular fiction, the stakes are higher: L’un et l’autre de ces effets serait dangereux en cette rencontre: il y va de la gloire de Dieu, qui se plaît dans celle de ses saints, dont la mort si précieuse devant ses yeux ne doit pas passer pour fabuleuse devant ceux des hommes. Au lieu de sanctifier notre théâtre par sa représentation, nous y profanerions la sainteté de leurs souffrances, si nous permettions que la crédulité des uns et la défiance des autres, également abusées par [ 15 ]

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ce mélange, se méprissent également en la vénération qui leur est due, et que les premiers la rendissent mal à propos à ceux qui ne la méritent pas, pendant que les autres la dénieraient à ceux à qui elle appartient. 46 [Each of these effects would be dangerous in this encounter: at stake is the glory of God, who takes pleasure in that of his saints, whose precious death before his eyes must not appear fantastic before those of men. Instead of sanctifying our theater by its representation, we would desecrate the sanctiy of their suffering, if we were to allow the gullibility of some and the wariness of others, both equally fooled by this mixture, equallty mistake the veneration that is due [to the saint], and that the first erroneously venerate those who do not deserve it, while the rest deny it to those who do.]

By worshiping the playwright’s fictional additions or by dismissing the sanctity of actual saints, the spectators’ gaze (“ceux [the eyes] des hommes”) risk transforming a pious undertaking (“sanctifier le théâtre”) into sacrilege. According to Corneille, the trouble with hagiographical theater is primarily epistemological: what is at stake is nothing less than the spectator’s belief in the existence of saint. This is a bold assumption on Corneille’s part. It seems unlikely that watching a play about a saint as well known as, say, Sebastian, would lead one to question his sanctity. It does, however, seem possible that one might believe a relatively minor saint like Polyeucte, whose name “beaucoup ont plutôt appris . . . à la comédie qu’à l’église” [many learned at the theater rather than in church], to be an entirely fictional creation. The Abrégé vitally links spectatorship with belief: when hagiography takes on “l’air de la fable,” as Boileau put it, it becomes difficult to discern truth from falsehood. As though to remedy the spectators’ alleged confusion, Corneille affixed the Abrégé du martyre de saint Polyeucte to his tragedy. While it was indeed commonplace for poets to publish an abbreviated account of the source of the tragedy by way of introduction, Corneille’s Abrégé is much more than a simple demonstration of the source text; it serves, crucially, as a means to disabuse spectators of any erroneous beliefs they may hold regarding the saint. Comme il a été à propos d’en rendre la représentation agréable, afin que le plaisir pût en insinuer plus doucement l’utilité, et lui servir comme de véhicule pour la porter dans l’âme du peuple, il est juste aussi de lui donner cette lumière pour démêler la vérité d’avec ses ornements, et lui [ 16 ]

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faire reconnaître ce qui lui doit imprimer du respect comme saint, et ce qui le doit seulement divertir comme industrieux. 47 [Since it was necessary to render the representation enjoyable, so that pleasure could more easily convey the utility and serve as a vehicle to carry it into the soul of the people, it is also right to give them this light in order to disentangle truth from its ornaments, and recognize what must impose respect as sacred and what must only entertain as industrious.]

The Abrégé thus serves as a necessary counterpart to the tragedy, a tool that allows the spectator to determine which elements of Polyeucte derive from the martyrology and which ones are of the poet’s invention. Pauline’s troubling dream, her former lover Sévère, the baptism that inspires Polyeucte’s iconoclastic zeal, the miraculous conversions of Pauline and Félix, are all “inventions et . . . embellissements du théâtre” [inventions and . . . embellishments of the theater].48 Nevertheless, these ornaments are major components of the tragedy (the unexpected return of Pauline’s ex-lover Sévère, who is absent from the saint’s martyrology, is arguably the catalyst for the entire tragedy49) and are essential to the unfolding of events leading to Polyeucte’s martyrdom. It is easy to see how embelishements of such proportions could be mistaken for truth. Corneille’s defense of his inventions, following the traditional Horatian dictum miscere utile dulci (“afin que le plaisir pût en insinuer plus doucement l’utilité”), speaks to the power of theater over the minds of the spectators as it becomes critical to provide them with a “lumière” [light] by which to discriminate between the truth (the events of Polyeucte’s martyrdom as recounted in the martyrology) and the poet’s fictitious ornaments. Regarding the truth, Corneille’s confused spectators seem to have been in the dark, so to speak, for several months. Polyeucte martyr premiered some time in December 1642 or January 1643 and was not printed until October 1643. The Abrégé suggests that the problem of belief is closely linked with performance. Indeed, the effects of the blend of truth and fiction vary according to the diverse minds “qui la voient” [who see it].50 The relationship between the printed dramatic text and performance in seventeenth-century France exceeds the scope of this study, but it is worth mentioning that the difference between a play’s “liveness,” to borrow a term from Philip Auslander, and its literariness seems especially pertinent for the discussion of hagiographical theater.51 For one thing, actors were long associated with impiety and immorality; it was scandalous that such individuals should appear in the roles of saints. According to D’Aubignac, for ex[ 17 ]

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ample, “l’on ne put souffrir que des gens dont la vie était souillée de ces honteuses pratiques, parussent aux yeux du public et à la face des Autels sous l’apparence et sous les marques sensibles des personnes les plus adorables à la piété des Chrétiens” [it could not be tolerated that people whose lives were stained by these shameful practices should appear before the eyes of the public and across from the altars in the guise of the most loveable individuals according to Christian piety].52 Yet it is not only the actors that rendered religious theater suspect. It is precisely the theater as spectacle, as performance that troubled Corneille. D’Aubignac, too, is wary of the performance of religious theater. Such plays “peuvent être lues avec plaisir et même avec fruit, mais elles ne peuvent être joués publiquement” [may be read with pleasure and even profitably, but they cannot be performed publicly] without producing “mauvais effets” [negative effects], “parce que celui qui lit, entre dans les sentiments de l’Auteur et ne voit rien alentour de lui qui porte sa pensée à la profanation des choses saintes. Il n’est point au Théâtre, il est dans son cabinet . . . , le livre lui parle sincèrement et sans déguisement” [because the reader enters into the author’s sentiments and sees nothing around him that that leads his thoughts toward the desecration of holy things. He is not at the theater, he is in his room . . . , the book speaks to him sincerely and without disguise].53 In other words, the “liveness” of performance—the actors’ bodies and gestures, the sound of their voices, the sight of other spectators, and so on—threatens to pollute the sanctity of a religious play’s subject. D’Aubignac concludes with a remark that religious subjects ought not be exposed “aux yeux et au jugement du public” [before the eyes and the judgment of the public]. Linking “eyes” and “judgment,” D’Aubignac places little faith in the spectator’s capacity to distinguish saintly truth from dramatic falsehood. Or, put differently, he places too much faith in the performance’s power to abuse the spectator’s intelligence. Such a weak opinion of the “public eye” had, by the time La Pratique appeared in 1657, become something of a commonplace in dramatic theory. In his acerbic attack on Corneille’s tragicomedy Le Cid, for example, Georges Scudéry dismissed the enthusiastic approval of the “peuple” (vs. the erudite spectators, among whom he counted himself ) “qui porte le jugement dans les yeux.”54 Scudéry uses this observation to denigrate Le Cid ’s success; the uneducated rabble evaluate plays superficially and are thus unfit to appraise a given play’s merits. For Faith Beasley, this attitude is symptomatic of an elite writer who sought to reaffirm the authority of neoclassical norms in the face of an increasingly important public for whom pleasure trumped rules in determining the success of a play.55 Moreover, Scudéry, like D’Aubignac, recognizes the often detrimental influence [ 18 ]

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of one’s surroundings (D’Aubignac’s “alentour”) in the theater, arguing that the common spectator’s enthusiasm for Le Cid during its premiere created a kind of fog that rose to infect even the mind of the otherwise astute Scudéry, who could not help but find the play “merveilleux” [marvelous] in the heat of the moment.56 Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac evinced a similarly weak opinion of the public eye during the Herodes infanticida controversy, which could be considered the erudite counterpart to the Cid controversy. Lasting from 1636 to 1646, the controversy pitted Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac against the tragedy’s author, the Dutch scholar Daniel Heinsius (1580–1655). Herodes infanticida, which dramatized the Biblical episode of the Massacre of the Innocents and Herod’s ensuing madness, came under fire in particular for its impertinent blend of Christian and pagan elements. For example, at the end of the tragedy Herod goes mad and is pursued across the stage by the Furies, meant to be allegorical representations of the tyrant’s guilty conscience. Balzac took issue with this representation, arguing that the spectators’ eyes are “les premiers juges des choses visibles” [the first judges of visible things] and, as such, will take the Furies at face value, failing to recognize them as allegories. Only an erudite spectator or reader has the wherewithal to appreciate the allegorical role of the Furies in an otherwise Christian drama.57 Poetic Faith

Faith—la foi—was not only a theological term, but also a poetic one in seventeenth-century France. Along with terms such as créance and croyance, “la foi” appears frequently in treatises on poetics, where it describes the spectator’s cognitive adhesion to the spectacle unfolding before his or her eyes: “la foi—ou la créance que l’on peut donner au sujet” [faith—or the credence that can be given to the subject].58 Derived from the Latin fidere or “to trust,” “la foi” gradually acquired a much stronger meaning than simply trusting another human being’s word and came to designate belief in the invisible, unverifiable mysteries of religion.59 According to long entry for “foi” in Furetière’s Dictionnaire, faith is above all a divine gift, “un don de Dieu; acquiescement ferme aux véritez, qu’il a revelées à son Eglise” [a gift from God; firm acceptance of the truths that he has revealed to his Church].60 In this definition, faith has little to do with reason or judgment; indeed, as a gift, it does not depend on the individual’s volition. This is a fideist position, according to which faith exceeds or transcends reason. It is not the only definition of faith. In the same entry, Furetière further defines it as “la croyance et la persuasion qu’on a qu’une chose est véritable et certaine” [the belief and [ 19 ]

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conviction one has that a thing is true and certain].61 Here, faith is a belief that depends upon argumentation or rhetoric (“persuasion”), to say nothing of the actual truth-value of the thing believed. This definition comes closest to the literary faith described by Chapelain, which the poet acquires by means of verisimilitude and decorum. Early modern dramatic theory closely followed Aristotle’s Poetics (1451a36– 1451b1) in defining verisimilitude or “vraisemblance” as something that, neither true nor patently false, has the appearance of truth. One of the greatest distinctions between the poet and the historian, according to Aristotle, is that the latter deals with historical truth, facts that—however incredible—nevertheless came to pass, whereas the former eschews the particulars of historical accuracy to present events not as they actually happened, but as they might happen according to the logic of probability (to eikos) or necessity (to anagkaion). [T]he poet’s task is to speak not of events which have occurred, but of the kind of events which could occur, and are possible by the standards of probability or necessity. For it is no the use or absence of metre which distinguishes poet and historian . . . : the difference lies in the fact that the one speaks of events which have occurred, the other of the sort of events which could occur.62

Although the poet and the historian may share the same raw material, they differ with respect to their treatment of it. The unfolding of a tragedy’s plot, then, is not motivated by the real (extratextual, historical) chronology of the events, but by their logical relationship to one another within the play. “En un mot” [In a word], writes D’Aubignac, “l’Historian doit raconter simplement ce qui s’est passé” [the historian must simply recount what has happened], whereas the poet must “tout restituer en état de vraisemblance et d’agrément” [restore everything to a state of verisimilitude and beauty].63 Following closely Aristotle, D’Aubignac holds that representation is not a one-to-one replication of reality, but rather the creation of a parallel narrative, complete, logical, and structurally coherent. While in the real world events may happen in the most incongruous, illogical, and inexplicable manner, in the fictional world of tragedy events must occur within the bounds of reason in order to be believable.64 In his explanation of verisimilitude, Chapelain insists on the role of human reason in determining the structure of fiction: “Cette vraisemblance” [This verisimilitude], he writes in the preface to Adone (1623), is “une représentation des choses comme elles doivent avenir, selon que le jugement humain, né et élevé au bien, les prévoit et les détermine” [a representation of [ 20 ]

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things as they must happen, depending on how human judgment, born and raised well, envisages and determines them].65 Chapelain thus expands upon Aristotle’s Poetics, explicity identifying judgment (“le jugement humain”) as the decisive factor in determining what may be represented and how. By placing the (rational) human being at the center of literary creation, Chapelain inaugurated a movement toward fiction as an autonomous product of human imagination, free from the constraints of historical, scientific, or religious accuracy. In this way, Chapelain fostered what one might call a secular understanding of fiction. Literary creation brought into being fictional worlds that obeyed the rule of (human) reason rather than the inscrutable will of God.66 These fictional worlds existed alongside and at times in opposition to other worldviews, including religious ones. Anne Duprat, whose study of early modern theories of fiction devotes substantial space to Chapelain, writes that the 1620s and 1630s, the period during which Chapelain penned his most influential theoretical works, can be characterized by “une confrontation d’une exceptionnelle richesse épistémologique entre la fiction et les autres discours sur le monde—celui de la foi, de l’histoire, de la morale et des sciences—qui se trouvent pendant toute la période qui s’étend entre le Concile de Trente et le début de la déchristianisation dans une position unique de rivalité directe” [a confrontation of exceptional epistemological richness between fiction and other discourses about the world—faith, history, morality, and science—that, during the period that stretches from the Council of Trent to the beginning of dechristianization, found itself in a position of direct competition].67 The development of literary theory in early modern France becomes a story of fiction’s emancipation from other forms of discourse. The task of defining the conventions that govern the creation of a fictional work and the criteria that determine its success would thus serve to legitimize fiction as a distinctive form of discourse and thereby guarantee its autonomy. If the Council of Trent has clearly defined dates (1545–1563), it is not at all clear where to situate the “beginning of dechristianization.” Moreover, the concept of dechristianization, like the concept of “modernity” with which it is so frequently conjugated, is itself probematic. Neatly opposing a religious, premodern dark ages and a secular, enlightened modernity, the narrative of dechristianization or secularization is an appealing one, but it does not tell the whole story. As scholars such as Giorgio Agamben, Jane Bennett, and Bruno Latour, among others, have shown, the secularization narrative is an oversimplification that occludes the theological dynamics that underpin (Agamben), “re-enchant” (Bennett), or complicate (Latour) our purportedly secular modernity.68 On these readings, the emergence of secular [ 21 ]

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institutions does not necessarily entail the demise of religion; rather, they variously co-opt, adapt, and translate theological forms and functions in a secular context. It is no surprise, then, that the emergence of secular institutions creates a “confrontation,” as Duprat notes, or a rivalry between secular and religious discourse. It is perhaps with this in mind that we ought to reread Antoine Godeau’s antitheatrical “Sonnet sur la Comédie:” the theater can reform “an idolatrous mind,” but Christians ought to seek moral instruction in church and not the theater. The reformed stage is as much a place of edification as it is of entertainment and here it enters into direct conflict with the Church. Fiction thus challenges the Church’s purchase on morality. What is more, the dynamics of the “idolatrous mind’s” reformation depend on the conviction that what happens in the fictional world portrayed on stage is true (at least for the duration of the play) and so come perilously close to the theological dynamics that underpin the concept of “faith.” This context sheds light on the stakes of Chapelain’s elaboration of poetic or literary “faith” as something superficially similar to yet substantially different from religious faith. Chapelain placed “faith” at the very heart of his project, explaining that is is “absolutely necessary in poetry.” Without faith, the reader (or spectator) would fail to step into the fictional world and consequently compromise both fiction’s capacity to delight and its potential for moral improvement. According to Chapelain, the success of a (dramatic) poem depends on the individual’s attention or affection; in other words, his or her emotional investment in the plot, without which poetry is ineffective: la foi, ou la créance que l’on peut donner au sujet; point important sur tous les autres pour ce qu’ils disent qu’où la créance manque, l’attention ou l’affection manque aussi; mais où l’affection n’est point il n’y peut avoir d’émotion et par conséquent de purgation, ou d’amendement ès moeurs des hommes, qui est le but de la poésie. La foi donc est d’absolue nécessité en poésie. Mais quelle foi peut-on ajouter à une fable reconnue pour telle? Le voici. La foi en la signification que nous la prenons, c’est-à-dire pour une inclination de la fantaisie à croire qu’une chose soit plutôt que de n’être pas, s’acquiert par deux moyens: . . . par le simple rapport de l’historien ou . . . par la vraisemblance de la chose rapporté, soit par l’historien soit par autre, qui est le moyen naturel efficace de s’acquérir de la foi.69 [faith, or the credence that can be given to the subject; a point that is important above all the others because they say that where trust is lacking, [ 22 ]

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attention or affection is also lacking; but where there is no affection there cannot be any emotion and consequently purgation, or improvement of men’s morals, which is the goal of poetry. Faith is thus absolutely necessary in poetry. But what kind of faith can one have in a fable that is recognized as such? This kind: faith, as we understand it, which is to say the imagination’s inclination to believe that something exists rather than doesn’t, can be obtained two ways: . . . simply by the historian’s account or . . . by the verisimilitude of the thing recounted, by the historian or another, which is the natural and effective means to secure faith.]

Faith, for Chapelain, is the belief (“créance”) that one has in something.70 Chapelain’s question—“quelle foi?”—calls attention to the term’s semantic uncertainty as well as to the importance of distinguishing this faith from other, perhaps more recognizable forms of faith. Jean Wirth has argued that “foi” did not exclusively designate a belief in something transcendent until Pascal, who separated religious “foi” from “croyance,” the latter understood as psychological (not spiritual) state.71 Thus at the time Chapelain set out to explain faith in fiction, the word was not yet clearly defined. What kind of faith can one have in a fable understood as fictional? Certainly this is not the faith that rests on empirical evidence, for fictional entities do not exist. Nor is this the religious faith that relies on divine revelation, as in Furetière’s definition. Chapelain’s poetic or literary faith depends instead on the ability to believe that something exists. This “inclination de la fantaisie à croire qu’une chose soit plutôt que de n’être pas” applies only to fictional objects that do not exist (“n’être pas”); the work of the imagination, guided by the skillful hand of the poet, makes these otherwise false objects believable. Chapelain’s definition allows him to distinguish poetic faith from religious faith, the object of which does exist (e.g., God).72 Describing poetic faith as a kind of intellectual assent on the part of the reader or spectator seems to announce a Romantic understanding of fiction’s work. But Chapelain’s “inclination de la fantaisie à croire” differs significantly from Coleridge’s “suspension of disbelief ” insofar as poetic faith is less a willing suspension of disbelief than it is a deliberate construction of belief.73 In other words, Chapelain’s explanation focuses on the means to acquire the reader or spectator’s assent. Chapelain may employ passive constructions (faith “s’acquiert,” for example, “par la vraisemblance de la chose rapporté”), but it is the author whose skillful blending of truth and fiction—the “ingénieuse tissure des fictions avec la vérité” of Corneille’s Abrégé—gives his product the appearance of truth, thereby convincing the reader or spectator to “believe,” as it were, fictional events. [ 23 ]

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To our twenty-first century minds, there may be little to distinguish the truth-value of fictional objects from that of religious objects, but this distinction is essential for delineating theater from ritual. Dennis Kennedy, in The Spectator and the Spectacle, takes Richard Schechner and his school of anthropological theater criticism to task for situating the difference between ritual and theater on the side of the performance. For Schechner, what matters in ritual is the exactness with which the ritual is carried out, regardless of the participant’s actual belief. Kennedy argues, instead, that the difference lies within the spectator’s belief, or lack thereof, in the performance. He further demonstrates that the pact between spectator and actor during a theatre performance closely resembles faith: The relationship between a willing, attentive audience and the performance is an agreement which approaches the quality of faith. A temporary agreement, to be sure, but a shared trust nonetheless. Does a performance achieve its singularity, its manufactured or contrived otherness, when this connivance occurs? If so, it is not a matter of suspending disbelief (a double negative that does not become a positive) but of creating belief in (sharing) the embodied intensity of the fiction through absorption with it.74

Chapelain and his contemporaries might not agree with Kennedy’s emphasis on the spectator’s free willingess to believe, since the very purpose of the rules of verisimilitude and decorum was rhetorical: to foster the spectator’s assent. They would, however, agree that it is a matter of “creating belief ” and that the spectator’s belief in the performance “approaches the quality of faith.” For Chapelain and most of his contemporaries, the difference between the two kinds of faith was essential: religious truths exist, fictional “truths” do not—they depend on the subject’s imaginative assent. Literary belief is in this way a product of the imagination (“la fantaisie”) and so distinct from religious belief, which is independent and transcends the imagination. For this reason, Duprat rightly calls Chapelain’s project a “laïcisation” of fiction, or the separation of religious and literary spheres.75 But what of the fictionalization of religious subjects? Do the two kinds of belief—literary and religious—come into conflict in the representation of the sacred, or are they synergistic? Further, if verisimilitude (“la vraisemblance de la chose rapporté”) is the most effective poetic means to foster the spectator’s faith, to what extent may a poet alter sacred history so as to render it verisimilar and thus believable in a work of fiction? A partial response appears in Corneille’s Examen of Polyeucte (1660), where he distinguishes between scriptural and hagiographical [ 24 ]

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texts. Unlike the Abrégé, which appeared alongside the printed play in 1643 as a heuristic device, the Examen, published nearly twenty years later, represents the author’s reflection on his work. He begins by considering the suitability of religious subjects for the theater and cites dramatic adaptations of scripture, including Daniel Heinsius’s Herodes infanticida (1632) and Hugo Grotius’s Christus Patiens (1608). These neo-Latin dramas adapted episodes from the New Testament (the Massacre of the Innocents and Christ’s Passion, respectively) and serve as bold examples of altering Biblical narrative. The choice was no doubt strategic, for Corneille will develop his analysis by distinguishing between the undeniable truths of scripture and the popular piety that characterizes the cult of the saints. Innocent by comparison with Biblical dramas, Corneille took a chance (“j’ai hasardé ce poème”) composing Polyeucte, où je me suis donné des licences qu’ils n’ont pas prises, de changer l’histoire en quelque chose, et d’y mêler des épisodes d’invention: aussi m’était-il plus permis sur cette matière qu’à eux sur celle qu’ils ont choisie. Nous ne devons qu’une croyance pieuse à la vie des saints et nous avons le même droit sur ce que nous en tirons pour le porter sur le théâtre, que sur ce que nous empruntons des autres histoires. 76 [in which I gave myself license that they did not, to change the story somewhat, and to incorporate invented episodes: indeed, it was more permissible in this material than in that which they chose. The lives of the saints demand only a pious belief, and we have the same right to adapt them for the theater as we do other stories.]

Corneille seems to soften the epistemological “danger” that he identified in the Abgrégé, where he tied the lives of saints to the glory of God and worried that the spectator might fall into error when hagiography meets fiction. Instead, saints’ lives belong to popular piety and demand only a kind of pious veneration, whereas scripture requires “une foi chrétienne et indispensable” [a Christian and indispensible faith].77 This is not Cornelian mental gymnastics; the distinction between degrees of worship is perfectly orthodox and recalls the difference between the adoration (latria), which is due to God alone, and a lesser form of veneration (dulia), which could be granted to saints.78 According to Corneille, this difference in the degree of devotion offered the poet considerable license in tailoring hagiographical material to the stage. A pious or respectful acceptance of the diverse elements of a saint’s life is, Corneille suggests, quite different from the solid conviction one has in “the Gospel truth.” In other words, there is no need to preserve every detail of a [ 25 ]

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saint’s life in composing a religious play. From the poet’s perspective, hagiography differs little from history and thus falls under the same poetic imperative to render the material verisimilar, according to probability and necessity, without however veering toward dangerous irreverence. Corneille’s assessment of hagiography in the Examen reflects a critical attitude toward saints’ lives underway in the seventeenth century. In popular devotion, Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda Aurea, with its often fantastical descriptions of the saints and their miracles, gradually fell out of favor and was replaced by Pedro de Ribadeneira’s Flos Sanctorum (1599–1601). Ribadeneira’s collection, which was translated and reissued throughout the early modern period, was especially popular as a private devotional book. It is this book that Molière’s “faux dévot” comically saves from desecration by handkerchief in the third act of Tartuffe. But it was the Dutch Jesuit Heribert Rosweyde (1569–1629) who first sought to bring biographical and philological rigor to the practice of editing the lives of saints. After his death, the work was carried on by Jean Bolland (1596–1665) and the Bollandists, who issued the first volume of the Acta sanctorum, devoted to the saints of January, in 1643.79 Hagiographical rigor, however, did not evacuate sanctity from the lives of the saints. Likewise, when Corneille equates saints’ lives with “other stories” (“des autres histoires”) he is not dismissing the saints as mythological constructs or mere actors in the historical record. As Simon Ditchfield reminds us, “the distinction made between the two literary genres—hagiography and history—is of comparatively recent origin. . . . In the early modern period . . . both hagiography and Chruch history writing were subsumed under the single label of historia ecclesiastica or historia sacra.”80 “[D]es autres histoires,” ecclesiastic rather than hagiographic, furnished Corneille with the material for several plays: including Héraclius (1647), Pertharite (1651), Attila (1667), and Pulchérie (1672).81 As for Polyeucte, Corneille consulted the passion as reported by the Carthusian friar Laurentius Surius (1522–1578) because the church historian Baronius “n’en dit qu’une ligne” [writes only one line about it].82 But even the Bollandists, with their critical hagiography, could have taken issue with Corneille’s poetic license. Rosweyde held that “art destroys truth” (ars veritatem perdidit). The saints need no embellishment. Indeed, “[t]he saints love their honour to be expressed by their natural colour, not by cosmetics; . . . they prefer to be known, rather than have their vestment admired.”83 The hagiographer’s target was not poetry but saints’ lives; he took issue with the tendency to smooth over narrative inconsistencies and grammatical infelicities when editing

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medieval texts. Nevertheless, Rosweyde’s observation that “art destroys [the] truth” of sanctity applies equally well to the dramatic adaptation of saints’ lives. It resonates especially with Boileau’s assessment that sacred mysteries are not to be “d’ornements égayés,” lest they take on the appearance of fiction. It also resonates with Corneille’s concerns in the Abrégé du martyre de saint Polyeucte. Indeed, the “ingénieuse tissure” of fiction and truth results in a kind of “vestment” with which the poet clothes the saints and in so doing commits a literal travesty. Thus the poetic faith acquired through the verisimilar representation of the saint’s life may eclipse the spectator’s faith in the saint. Conclusion: “Credibile quia ineptum”

I have argued in this chapter that early modern French theater remained deeply engaged with religion, despite claims that the theater had relinquished its religious origins in a bid to earn its place in society as an morally suitable form of entertainment. In particular, the key dramatic concept of verisimilitude cannot be adequately appreciated without taking into account the relationship between “poetic faith” based on persuasion and religious faith based on revelation. Poetic faith is essential to fiction. According to Chapelain, there are two principal means to convince the reader or spectator: first, the simple report and second, the verisimilitude of the report. As we have seen, the second applies to the poet who, laboring under the dual imperative of probability and necessity with respect to the plot, manipulates his material such that it corresponds to logic, reason, and morality. This would seem to exclude the representation of sanctity, since poetic modifications threaten to erase essential truths as they create a pleasingly uniform portrait of the saint. Corneille held, on the contrary, that saints’ lives do not differ significantly from “other stories,” thereby giving the poet license to modify the hagiographical account. Yet his own additions are largely incidental; the essential component of Polyeucte’s sanctity—his martyrdom—in fact disappears from the representational field, a point to which we will return in chapter 4. This blind spot, then, invites us to ask whether there is anything that by its very nature resists dramatic adaptation according to the prevailing early modern theory of fiction as verisimilar. In other words, the weaving together of fact and fiction may obscure the truth, but is there a fact, true, that cannot be joined to fiction? In his Rhetoric (1400a21–22), Aristotle observes that human beings are inclined to believe either facts or probabilities. Consequently, if someone believes

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something that is improbable, then it must be true, because the individual’s belief in it cannot be based on any rational demonstration: Another topic is derived from things which are thought to happen but are incredible (apiston), because it would never have been thought so, if they had not happened or almost happened. And further, these things are even more likely to be true; for we only believe in that which is (ta onta), or that which is probable (ta eikota): if then a thing is incredible (apiston) and not probable (me eikos), it will be true (alethes): for it is not because it is probable and credible that we think it is true.84

In this passage, Aristotle discusses things that are supposed to have happened, yet seem incredible (apiston, from the verb pisteuo, “trust,” which also furnished the early Christian word for faith, pistis). If there is such a thing that is believed to have occurred, yet is unlikely according to human judgment, then it must be fact. In other words, the improbability of an alleged event reinforces its facticity. Some things are so improbable that it is in fact reasonable to believe them, an assertion that lies behind such popular idioms as “you can’t make this up” or “truth is stranger than fiction.” The implausible thus becomes the mark of the real. Fiction, on the other hand, traffics in what is verisimilar, what resembles the real.85 In the Rhetoric, Aristotle is of course concerned with the art of persuasion, not aesthetics or poetics. But when read in conjunction with his discussion of plausibility and verisimilitude (ta eikos) in the Poetics (1450a27–28), this passage suggests that incredible things belong exclusively to the sphere of reality or “being” (ta onta) and thus cannot be incorporated into the plot. After all, the poet must choose to represent “[e]vents which are impossible but plausible (adunata eikota)” over those that are “possible but implausible (dunata apithana).”86 This allows the poet plenty of room for invention, so long as the invented material meets the criterion of plausibility. As for real material, events or “historical events (genomena)” may very well be “in the conformity with probability (eikos genesthai kai dunata genesthai), and it is with respect to probability that the poet can make his poetry from them.”87 In this way, the poet may recount a real, historical event according to its probability. In other words, according to the guiding principle of verisimilitude. But what about a fact that is not in conformity with the possible order of things, Aristotle’s category of an implausible or unconvincing possibility, dunata apithana? Following Aristotle’s Rhetoric, since the dunata apithana is neither believable (it is apiston) nor probable, it seems to confront the poet with something [ 28 ]

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that might be, to paraphrase Jacques Rancière, unrepresentable.88 Indeed, if something does not fall under the probable, it would seem to lack that “aspect” (i.e., of probability) that lies within the poet’s purview. If we admit such an implausibility, then, following what Aristotle writes in the Rhetoric, it would have to be true because it is incredible and improbable. A nearly identical expression of truth and belief appears in Tertullian’s treatise On the Flesh of Christ.89 The early church father identifies the central mystery of Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection as a kind of implausibility that, like the incredible and improbable thing in the Rhetoric, must be true. Crucifixus est dei filius: non pudent, quia pudendum est. Et mortuus est dei filius: prorsus credibile est, qui ineptum est. Et sepultus resurrexit: certum est, quia impossibile The Son of God was crucified: it is not shameful, because it is shameful. The Son of God was killed: it is believable, because it is absurd. And he rose from the tomb: it is certain, because it is impossible.90

The familiar and oft-misquoted final line of this passage articulates an apparent paradox: it is certain, because it is impossible. To be sure, Tertullian does not mean to suggest that Christian mysteries are absurd but rather “deliberately exaggerates, in order to call attention to the truth he has to convey.”91 That truth is none other than the Incarnation. Scholars such as Jean-Claude Fredouille and Eric Osborn have argued that Tertullian’s paradox can only be understood properly within the narrow theological context of On The Flesh of Christ, which Tertullian wrote in response to the so-called Docetists (from the verb dokein, “to seem”). This group held that Christ only appeared to be human, as a kind of illusion. In so doing they denied the humanity of Christ and consequently what was for orthodox Christianity a central tenet of faith.92 Countering the Docetists, Tertullian insists on the reality of Christ’s body in all its embarrassing physicality from its formation in the womb to its ruin on the cross. If God is capable of anything, he argues, then certainly he can flout human and therefore limited expectations regarding the (im)propriety of a spiritual entity sullied by the flesh. The paradox, then, limits its scope to the doctrine of the Incarnation. It does not make claims of universal applicability. Such a contextual reading of the passage dispels the popular belief that Tertullian’s paradox articulates a fideist credo, but it does not preclude the possibility of poetic or aesthetic implications. In fact, Tertullian furnishes a concrete example of the kind of fact that is neither probable (me eikos) nor believable (apiston) to which Aristotle only alludes in the Rhetoric: [ 29 ]

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the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Christ.93 These miracles are believed not because they are plausible or probable; indeed by definition they are both incomprehensible and extraordinary. Rather, it is because they are extraordinary that they must be true. In a sermon on Saint Mammes, a third-century childmartyr, contained in his Panégyriques des saints, Jean-François Senault quotes Tertullian’s paradox to justify the belief in sacred truths, however implausible, explaining: “i’apprens du docte Tertulien, que nos mysteres ne sont iamais plus croyables, que lors qu’ils paroissent incroyables, & qu’il ne les faut iamais davantage reuerer que quand ils surpassent la foiblesse de nostre esprit” [I learn from the wise Tertullian that the mysteries of our religion are never more believable than when they appear unbelievable, and that never demand more reverence than when they transcend our the weakness of our minds].94 If the dramatic poet may only adapt that which is in conformity with probability, then Christian mysteries would appear to be off-limits. Further, the theological context in which Tertullian composed On the Flesh of Christ in fact strengthens a poetic extrapolation of the passage. The Docetists, after all, maintained that Christ only appeared to have a physical body because it was inconceivable that a divinity should so ignobly suffer pain and death, the consequences of embodiment. They made the Incarnation a kind of deception or fiction that made sense of an otherwise incredible event. Tertullian’s emphasis on the implausible and extraordinary physicality of the Incarnation counters the Docetist claim, rejecting the criterion of plausibility. As art historian Georges Didi-Huberman has persuasively argued, Tertullian counters “les vraisemblances de la tromperie” [the plausibilities of deception] with “l’invraisemblance du réel” [the implausibility of the real] and in so doing introduces a theory of Christian representation that disrupts the mimetic paradigm of deceiving appearances.95 If the Incarnation transcends human comprehension, so too do the saints who are, in a way, miraculous. As Emile Mâle noted in his classic study of religious artwork, “The saints of the Middle Ages wrought miracles. But the saints of the Counter-Reformation were miracles.”96 During the seventeenth century, the emphasis on the cult of the saints shifted slowly away from the view of saints as wonderworkers toward saints as wonders themselves, human beings transformed by their earthly likeness to Christ and their subsequent participation in the beatific vision. Accordingly, they were considered models and intercessors to the faithful who sought a more intense relationship to the divine.97 At the same time, the Counter-Reformation church enthusiastically promoted their cult, through sermons (particularly panegyrics of the saints), pilgrimages, and processions of relics [ 30 ]

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and holy images like the annual procession of Saint Reine’s relics in Burgundy or that of Saint Genevieve in Paris. It is not entirely in error that the seventeenth century has been called the “siècle des saints” [century of saints].98 The proliferation of devotional practices and art forms related to the cult of the saints reminds us that, as Cary Howie recently put it, “the bodies of saints . . . are understood participatively, understood, that is, as simultaneously belonging and pointing . . . to an embodiment that, strictly speaking, exceeds them.” 99 Sanctity, like the miracles Senault wrote about in his sermon on Saint Mammes, exceeds the limits of human comprehension. Sanctity also exceeds the limits of representation, when human comprehension is its condition. The hagiographical theater of the early modern period can be seen as much more than a devotional enterprise intended to sanctify the stage. If CounterReformation art constituted a “laboratory,” to quote Simon Ditchfield, in which artists “attempted to think and represent what had previously been regarded as unthinkable or impossible to represent,” it is fair to say that the authors of hagiographical theater, too, “thought with saints” in order to think about the theater.100 The “laboratory” of hagiographical theater thus became a place to test the limits of Aristotelian poetics, to “hazard,” as Corneille wrote, the dramatic adaptation of hagiography. The experiment could indeed prove hazardous. On the one hand, the cult of the saints could be contaminated by the pleasures of the stage. On the other, the cult of the theater could be contaminated by the intrusion of saints. The separation of Church and Stage, then, looks less like the product of ecclesiastical antitheatrical polemic and more like a compromise between two camps eager to preserve the sanctity, so to speak, of their respective institutions.

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2 THE SPECTACLE OF M ARTYRDOM AND THE SPECTACL E OF THE STAGE

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A R T Y R D O M , F R O M T H E Greek martyrein or “to witness,” is a deeply spectacular phenomenon.1 The martyr publicly bears witness to his or her faith and the assembled spectators in turn witness the martyr’s extraordinary fortitude. In martyrological narratives, the martyrs work miracles (taming savage beasts, for example, or putting out fires) but they themselves are nothing short of miraculous; the martyr’s ability to endure the worst torments is itself a wonder that demonstrated God’s omnipotence before the assembled spectators. Seeing the martyr is essential but by the 1640s dramatic conventions, foremost among them the warning not to “bloody the stage,” prevented playwrights from staging the martyr’s suffering body. How, then, might the theater convey the full force of martyrdom without showing the body? In what follows, we will see that Christianity’s ambivalent attitude toward spectacle creates conditions in which the success of the spectacle depends, paradoxically, on a disavowal of the spectator’s gaze. Christian spectacles (spectacula christiana) such as martyrdom must always be more than superficial displays of bodily suffering by inviting the spectator to share in the martyr’s self-sacrifice and spiritual victory. Spectacles, then, were on the one hand necessary and, on the other, fraught with the potential to excite idle fascination rather than a genuine conversion. Early modern theater reformers exhibited an analogous suspicion of spectacle, acknowledging its psychic power while signaling its potential to escape the poet’s control and “shock” not only the rules of dramatic poetry, but also the eyes of the spectator. Reformers consequently prescribed channeling the power of the spectacle into discourse, converting sight into speech that could be woven seamlessly into the fabric of the plot. Yet as we saw in the previous chapter, sanctity

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exceeds intelligibility. In this way, a break with the intelligible narrative of the dramatic plot could convey the miraculous nature of sanctity without necessarily staging a martyr’s torment and death. This is precisely the strategy adopted by Nicolas Mary Desfontaines in his tragedy Le Martyre de saint Eustache (1643), which concludes with a spectacle of the martyrs’ apotheosis, incorporating music and machinery, as a substitute for their suffering. The dazzling finale to Desfontaines’s tragedy thereby invites the spectator to bear witness to the martyrs’ triumph and, in so doing, redeems, as it were, the spectacle. Despite its association with gory scenes of bodily suffering, theologians and preachers had long exhibited an ambivalent attitude toward the spectacle of martyrdom. In his Panégyrique de saint Victor, pronounced in July 1657, JacquesBénigne Bossuet (1627–1704) describes the martyrdom of Saint Victor of Marseilles in uncharacteristically lurid detail; warning his audience, however, that “Dieu ne se plaît pas dans le sang; mais il se plaît dans le spectacle de la patience” [God does not take pleasure in blood, but he does take pleasure in the spectacle of suffering].2 Bossuet invokes the divine spectator as a model for contemplating martyrdom: not as a simple display of blood, but as a demonstration of virtue. Such concern for proper spectation reveals the profoundly ambiguous nature of martyrdom as spectacle, for there is always the possibility that the spectator will stop short of extracting a religious lesson from the martyr’s death, lingering instead on the depiction of suffering without obtaining any spiritual benefit.3 In part, this is because the visual dynamics of martyrological narrative are rooted in the theater and gladiatorial spectacle. As Elizabeth Castelli has shown in Martyrdom and Memory, early Christians “appropriated the logic of the spectacle” even as they denounced “the brutalizing impact of looking upon violence” in their antitheatrical polemics.4 In hagiographical narratives, martyrs “often display their virtue through their manipulation of the logic of the spectacular gaze.”5 For example, they reinterpreted the scene of temporal justice, where the martyr stands accused of crimes against (the gods of ) the state, into a scene of transcendant justice, where the pagan tyrant now stands before a divine judge. This judiciary scene is also a theatrical scene, where the tyrant mistakenly casts himself as a stage director when in fact he is but an actor in a larger drama. In this way, early Christian writers transformed martyrs into spectacula christiana, Christian spectacles, theologically distinct from yet superficially similar to the spectacles of the theater and the arena. So similar, in fact, that the pleasures of the spectatorship carried over, disturbingly, into Christian discourse on martyrdom. The Church Fathers’ sus[ 33 ]

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picion of the prurient gaze, what Augustine termed concupiscentia oculorum or “lust of the eyes,” and the associated pleasures and dangers of spectation is well known and hardly needs to be rehashed here.6 What is striking is the degree to which the early church exploited spectation to ostensibly apologetic ends. In one of the most influential antitheatrical tracts of late antiquity, On Spectacles, Tertullian fulminates in typical fashion against gladiatorial fights and stage plays over twenty-eight chapters, reprising familiar arguments against licentiousness, idolatry, and the injurious impact (concussione spiritus) of spectating.7 Yet his unexpected conclusion stands out. “Do you desire blood?” he asks rhetorically, anticipating an affirmative response. “You have the blood of Christ.”8 The Christian religion offers as satisfying a spectacle as anything devised by the Greeks and Romans. So for every pleasure promised by pagan spectacles, Tertullian provides a Christian counterpart: “these are the pleasures (haec voluptates), the spectacles of Christians.”9 Saving the best for last, in his final chapter, Tertullian fully embraces theatrical language and, as Castelli wittily puts it, “promises a last act that will literally bring down the house.”10 But what a spectacle is already at hand—the return of the Lord, now no object of doubt, now exalted, now triumphant! . . . How vast the spectacle that day, and how wide! What sight shall make my wonder, what my laughter, my joy and exultation? as I see those kings, those great kings . . . groaning in the depths of darkness! And the magistrates . . . liquefying in fiercer flames than they kindled against the Christians! . . . And then there will be tragic actors to be heard (audiendi), more vocal in their own tragedy; and the players to be seen (cognoscendi), lither of limb by far in the fire; and then the charioteers to watch (spectandus), red all over in the wheel of flame.11

At the spectacle of the Parousia or the Second Coming of Christ, Tertullian (somewhat presumptiously) places himself among the saints as a privileged spectator whose conspectum insatiabilem [insatiable gaze] beholds a seemingly endless display of violence, anguish, and acrobatics, all the more satisfying because it is real, not fiction.12 Tertullian’s vision of the ultimate Christian spectacle is troubling not because it apes the Roman arena and theater, but because it introduces an element of pleasure that comes disturbingly close to the kinds of voyeurism that were normally considered suspect or outright dangerous by his fellow Christians. It seems that for Tertullian the lust of the eyes is not condemned per se, but rather displaced onto a legitimate object of spectation, a spectaculum christianum.13 [ 34 ]

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The unforgettable final chapter of On Spectacles served centuries of theologians who employed it to demonstrate the urgency of conversion (lest one end up on the wrong side of the spectacle) and to seduce their readers away from worldly spectacles. Bossuet, for example, without Tertullian’s voyeuristic enthusiasm for the punishment of the wicked, ends his antitheatrical Maximes et réflexions sur la comédie (1694) in a similar fashion. It is almost certain that Bossuet intended to echo the author of On Spectacles by closing with an appeal to substitute Christian spectacles for the illicit pleasures of the worldly stage. “s’il faut, pour nous émouvoir, des spectacles, du sang répandu, de l’amour, que peut-on voir de plus beau ni de plus touchant que la mort sanglante de Jésus-Christ et de ses martyrs” [If spectacles, blood, and love is required to move us, what sight can be more beautiful and more touching than the bloody death of Jesus Christ and his martyrs]?14 Here, martyrdom is a moving, beautiful, and touching spectacle. It thus has the potential to affect the spectator with the same emotional intensity as, for example, a tragedy performed on the public stage. Crucially, however, the passions stirred by tragic theater are, for Bossuet, illegitimate, whereas those elicited by the martyrs are legitimate and useful for ongoing spiritual development. Moreover, Bossuet’s suggests that the spectacles of the martyrs are not only legitimate objects of spectation, they urge the spectator’s participation in the central mystery of the Incarnation. The importance of participation leads Bossuet to distinguish, in the Panégyrique de saint Victor, between those who would simply gaze upon Victor’s torments with curious eyes and those who, conversely, would emulate the martyr by testing their resolve. The first are guilty of theatricalizing, as it were, the preacher’s vivid representation of Victor’s martyrdom. As “spectateurs oisifs” [idle spectators], they look upon martyrial suffering as though it were a stage play. Quoi! serons-nous seulement des spectateur oisifs? Quoi! verrons-nous le grand saint Victor boire à long traits ce calice amer de sa passion, que le Fils de Dieu lui a mis en main; et nous croirons que cet exemple ne nous regarde point, et nous n’avalerons pas une seule goutte, comme si nous n’étions pas enfants de la croix! 15 [What? will we be only idle spectators? What? will we watch the great saint Victor drink deeply from the bitter cup of his passion, which the Son of God put into his hand; and believe that this model does not concern us at all, and swallow not a single drop, as though we were not children of the Cross?] [ 35 ]

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Here, Bossuet condemns the theatrical gaze as ineffective and admonishes his audience to drink from the bitter cup of martyrdom, reactivating a Biblical image.16 In other words, the spectator is called upon to participate in the martyr’s suffering and ultimately in that of Christ. Implicit in Bossuet’s distinction between idle and engaged spectators is the condemnation of profane spectacles, particularly tragedies, in which the spectator might enjoy a gratuitous compassion, since he or she is exempt for actually participating in the suffering of a (fictional) being. On the other hand, the spectator who drinks from Victor’s bitter cup is like the communicant during the Mass; the spectacle (of the liturgy, the ritual reenactment of the Last Supper, and the presentation of the consecrated host before the eyes of the congregation) becomes the means by which he or she participates in the mystery of redemptive suffering and the promised resurrection. This is abundantly clear in the opposition between the eyes and the mouth, between spectation and ingestion, in the passage. Whereas visual recognition, upon which mimetic representation depends, implies a certain distance between the eye and the object of sight, incorporation abolishes distance. Bossuet’s representation (“je dois vous représenter le martyre” [I must represent the martyrdom]) of Victor’s martyrdom on his feast day, July 21, in the abbey that bore his name and contained some of his relics, was in this way part of the “kinetic, multimedia experience” that characterized the Counter-Reformation cult of the saints.17 Appealing to the senses might have been a powerful means to engage the public, but it came with no guarantee that the the vivid portrayal of martyrdom will invite an authentic spiritual reformation via the vicarious experience of suffering. Spectacula christiana were still spectacula, and the “prurient gaze” of the spectator always threatened turn edification into entertainment.18 Representing The Spectacle of Martyrdom

Counter-Reformation artists seized martyrdom’s spectacular potential to depict vivid scenes of both suffering and ecstasy, portraying the human body at its most vulnerable and, paradoxically, at its most powerful. That power is at once consonant with Christian theology, whereby the martyr’s endurance demonstrates God’s omnipotence, and poetics, where the sight of the tortured body is capable of eliciting a potent emotional response. Ideally, these operate in concert with one another, encouraging greater devotion through a direct appeal to the senses. Poussin’s famous painting of Erasmus’s martyrdom, for example, executed in Rome in 1629, clearly focuses on the martyr’s cruel and unusual punishment by having his [ 36 ]

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entrails removed and wound around a wheel. Martyrdom, as Alice Dailey puts it, “reorganizes sites of horror into sites of beauty” by “aestheticizing suffering.”19 To be sure, poetry, narrative, and the plastic arts could also transform horror into beauty. The difference is that the aestheticization of the martyr’s suffering is theologically sanctioned—it is a pulchrum spectaculum Deo [beautiful sight to God].20 The figure of the tortured body thus captured the imagination of early modern authors who saw in it the a potentially ideal artistic expression of suffering or pathos, which Aristotle and his early modern commentators recognized as essential to tragedy. Indeed, as Daniel Boyarin has remarked, “[m]artyrdom, even more than tragedy, is Thanatoi en toi phanaroi, ‘deaths that are seen,’ murders in public spaces.”21 Boyarin quotes Aristotle’s Poetics, specifically the enigmatically brief passage in which the philosopher discusses pathos as the third constituent element of tragedy. To the definitions of reversal [peripeteia] and recognition [anagnorisis] already given we can add that of suffering [pathos]: a destructive or painful action, such as visible deaths [hoi te en toi phaneroi thanatoi], torments, woundings, and other things of that kind.22

Unlike the other two elements of tragedy, each of which is the object of sustained analysis in the lines preceding this passage, pathos is neither defined nor explained but rather exemplified through a quick series of potential instances, all linked to the human body’s vulnerability. The “nominal place” (Halliwell) that Aristotle grants to pathos could suggest its diminished importance with respect to the other two tragic constituents. Yet it could also suggest that Aristotle takes for granted the place of suffering in tragedy and needs not explain in any detail what is assumed to be a given. The question then is not whether suffering is necessary but rather how a poet can incorporate “visible deaths” into his product. Delivering a satisfying answer to that question depends largely on how one interprets the prepositional phrase en toi phaneroi. Strictly speaking, phaneros means simply “manifest” or “evident,” and there is no requirement that the manifestation be material and visible to the eye. Indeed, in common usage an “epiphany,” which shares the root phanein or “to show,” is a revelation that need not have an actual visual component. Similarly, a theophany, in the Christian context, does not necessarily denote the visual perception of God through the organ of sight, but rather a manifestation of divine presence, often through another medium, as in the well-known Biblical example of the burning bush from the book of Exodus. Aristotle’s expression is not unambiguous and many translations [ 37 ]

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seek to resolve that ambiguity. In their French translation of the Poetics, Roselyne Dupont-Roc and Jean Lallot give “sur scène” [on stage] as the French equivalent for en toi phaneroi, clearly opting for a literal reading of the passage.23 This reading in turn yokes pathos to spectacle (opsis) and licenses their explanation of pathos as an “intrusion du spectacle dans l’histoire” [an intrusion of spectacle into the plot].24 (I will return to the role of spectacle shortly.) Boyarin similarly takes a literal view, but widens the scope beyond the stage to encompass all public places. Stephen Halliwell, on the other hand, opts for the more generous “visible deaths.” This rendering, while allowing for the actual staging of such violence, also accommodates off-stage deaths that are vividly recounted by an actor and thus made visible to the mind’s eye. Furthermore, Halliwell’s translation resolves the problem posed by spectacular “intrusions” into the plot by making “visible deaths” manifest through language, in conformity with Aristotle’s assertion, repeated through the seventeenth century, that tragedy’s potential can be realized without public performance or actors.25 After all, Aristotle elsewhere describes graphic metaphors as those that put “before our eyes” (pro ommaton) images in order to affect (paskein, from which the substantive pathos derives) the hearer.26 For seventeenth-century playwrights, hypotyposis or enargeia, the rhetorical figure by which off-stage events were vividly recounted by an actor, had become the standard means by which spectacle was incorporated into the plot, thereby satisfying the requirement that suffering be “visible” without actually staging violent action. Prior to the 1640s, when the injunction not to bloody the stage proscribed the visual representation of violence, martyrological theater indulged in the representation of bodily harm, literally putting the martyrs’ torments and deaths en toi phaneroi, on stage.27 Boissin de Gallardon, the author of several pastoral plays, “tragi-pastorales,” as well as martyrological theater, did not shy away from vivid portrayals of corporeal violence. We know almost nothing about the author, but his Martyre de saincte Catherine and Martyre de sainct Vincens, both of which appeared in a 1618 collection of his plays, illustrate a taste for spectacular violence that was common in the first two decades of the seventeenth century. His Vincent, for example, is condemned to be roasted alive on a gridiron and then fed to wild animals. In a particularly grisly scene, Vincent prays for God to grant him strength as he endures his punishment on “cette grille” [this grill], which an executioner cruelly describes as “un lict bien délectable” [a very comfortable bed]. Though there are no stage directions, the dialogue between the executioners and the martyr appears to take place while he is being tortured:

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Les Bourreaux. Prens courage je voy ta graisse qui degoute. S. Vincens. Ah! quelle cruauté punir un innocent. Les Bourreaux. Voila que de bien vivre, and estre obeissant. S. Vincens. J’obey à mon Dieu, non pas à vostre maistre, Qui devroit estre icy, à fin de se repaistre, Comme un tigre cruel, sur mon corps tout grillé.28 [The Executioners. Stay strong, I see your fat dripping. St. Vincent. Oh! How cruel it is to punish an innocent. The Executioners. This is what it is to live well and obediently. St. Vincent. I obey my God and not your master, Who ought to be here, in order to feed, Like a cruel tiger, on my well-grilled body.]

The episode strongly suggests that Vincent’s torment was intended to be represented on stage, had the play been staged (there is, however, no evidence that it was). Moreover, the episode revels in indecorous language and crude humor—the kind of “rough theater” (Brook) that the reformed French stage would not allow. While Vincent is being roasted alive, his executioners mock him, calling attention to his smoldering flesh and joking that the meal will soon be ready. Mercifully, an angel, which none of the executioners seem to notice, appears to console Vincent, reminding him that his constancy will be rewarded in heaven. The coexistence of the brutish executioners and the divine messenger and the juxtaposition of their coarse humor and the angel’s words of consolation may indeed be a vestige of the medieval mystery play tradition, in which such scenes were common, but derision and divinity are deeply intertwined in Christian narratives of suffering, from the jeering crowds and dice-playing soldiers at the Crucifixion to the embarrassing punishments meted out to the early martyrs. In Saincte Catherine, Boissin’s rendering of the encounter between Catherine and the emperor similarly suggests the visible representation of torture: L’empereur. Il ne s’est jamais veu engins si torturans, Tout cela ira bien, faisons qu’elle les voye: Catherine veux-tu donner ton corps en proye

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A ces glaives tranchans, il faut le declarer. ... Regarde ces couteaux de subtile affilure, Et [illegible] ces fers aussi cruels en leur pointure, Sacrifie soudain, ou je t’appliqueray A ceste gesne là, & pour fin je verray Si les tours & retours de ces deux pieces rondes Engloutiront avec leurs forces furibondes.29 [The Emperor. Never have we seen such instruments of torture, All will go well, show them to her: Catherine, do you want to give your body Over to these cutting blades? You must say so. ... Behold these thin-bladed knives, And . . . these cruelly pointed irons, Now sacrifice [to the pagan gods], or I will put you To that torment, and will see once and for all If the turning of thes two wheels Will consume [you] with their cruel power.]

The emperor takes inventory of the various instruments of torture before him, gesturing toward “ces glaives tranchans” and “ces fers . . . cruels.” His frequent use of imperatives (“faisons qu’elle les voye” [show them to her], “regarde” [look]) emphasizes his role not only as a sovereign asserting his political authority over an unruly subject, but also as a kind of stage director, orchestrating a harrowing scene of torture. Indeed, earlier the emperor, having heard a description of the wheel, demands to see (“fay que je voye” [show me]) the “belle invention” [beautiful invention]. Catherine, true to hagiographical form, remains untroubled by the sight of such a terrifying machine. The emperor, unable to control his rage, can hardly wait to begin and commands his guards to strap her to the wheel: Sus sus empoignez la, & qu’on me la torture, Elle ne peut souffrir une peine trop dure, Attachez & liez son corps à ces outils, Pour luy faire gouster leurs tournements subtils: ... Je suis las de parler, tournez ceste machine.30

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[Come now, grab her and torture her for me, She cannot tolerate so harsh a punishment, Attach and tie her body to this instrument, So that she gets a taste of their sharp turns: ... I’m weary of talking, turn the machine.]

Although, as in Sainct Vincens, we have no indication as to whether or not the play was performed, there is little doubt that Boissin intended to stage the instruments of Catherine’s torture and her being strapped to the wheel. The corporeal violence of Boissin’s martyrological plays had become largely unthinkable by the 1640s, particularly in Parisian theaters. In his dramatic adaptation of Catherine’s martyrdom, published in 1642, Puget de la Serre eschews the visual violence that characterized Boissin’s tragedy. Instead, Catherine reappears after having miraculously overcome her punishment on the wheel, which took place off-stage. Such restraint was not unusual. Critics and many playwrights writing at the time took to heart Aristotle’s exclusion of spectacle (opsis) from the poet’s sphere of activity, repeatedly warning against “bloodying the stage” and cautioning against the incorporation of spectacular stage effects. In the Poetics, Aristotle gives short shrift to spectacle, suggesting that it is not even necessary for a tragedy to produce its emotional effect on the audience: Of the remaining elements, lyric poetry is the most important of the garnishments, while spectacle is emotionally powerful (psychagogikon) but is the last integral of all the poet’s art (atekhnotaton, literally “foreign to the art [tekhne]” of the poet): for the potential (dynamis) of tragedy does not depend upon public performance and actors; and, besides, the art of the mask-maker (skenopoion) carries more weight than the poet’s as regards the elaboration of visual effects (ton opseon).31

At first glance, this is a startling assertion: that a tragedy’s potential can be actualized without performance seems like a contradiction in terms. Isn’t the theater, after all, the most visible of art forms? To make sense of this apparent contradiction, it is worth recalling that opsis (“spectacle”) and theatron (“a place for seeing, theater”), while in many ways overlapping terms, are not synonymous for Aristotle and consequently have different connotations. Theatron, from the verb theasthai “behold,” gave rise to the English word “theater,” designating both the physical structure and the literary genre associated with that structure. Yet the [ 41 ]

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etymological journey of theasthai would not be complete without noting the word “theory,” which designates a mental view. Theater and theory, seeing and contemplating, are closely related. Opsis, on the other hand, derives from the word for “eye” or “face” (op, ops) and gave rise to modern terms related to the eye as an sense organ or to vision as a physiological (rather than a psychic) phenomenon: optics, optical, optometry, autopsy. Spectacle (opsis), then, has to do with the elements of the stage that are materially present and physically visible rather than imagined. Thus, for Aristotle, the actualization of a tragedy’s potential (dynamis) may be entirely “theoretical,” so to speak. In this way, it is just as likely to occur during the reading of a text as it is in performance.32 Although spectacle may be powerful (psychagogikon, or “leading the soul”), Aristotle warns against using it as a means to move the audience. Emotions can certainly arise from the spectacle (ek te opseos), but, more importantly, they can be brought about through the poet’s careful elaboration of the plot. Echoing the earlier passage (1450b17–20), Aristotle holds that to produce en emotional effect through the spectacle (dia tes opseos) is not the poet’s job. The effect of fear and pity can arise from the theatrical spectacle, but it can also arise from the intrinsic structure of events, and it is this which matters more and is the task of a superior poet. For the plot-structure ought to be so composed that, even without seeing a performance, anyone who hears the events which occur will experience terror and pity as a result of the outcome; . . . To produce this effect through spectacle is not part of the poet’s art, and calls for material resources.33

This presents a challenge to the playwright, who ought to move his audience without recourse to the powerful, but facile, deployment of spectacle. Seventeenthcentury reformers of the stage largely reproduced Aristotle’s prescriptions regarding the production of emotional effects. In his Poétique (1639), Hippolyte-Jules Pilet de la Mesnardière (1610–1663) made clear his agreement: “Et j’estime avec Aristote, qu’un Ouvrage est imparfait, lors que par la seule lecture faite dans un cabinet, il n’excite pas les Passions dans l’esprit de ses Auditeurs, & qu’il ne les agite point: jusques à les faire trembler, ou à leur arracher des larmes” [With Aristotle I consider a work imperfect, when reading it in a room does not excite the passions and agistate the readers, making them tremble or cry].34 He writes that any writer who succeeds in doing so deserves praise: “l’Ecrivain merite beaucoup de louanges lors que par le seul discours, il produit les mesmes effets que les Spectacles réels” [the writer deserves much praise when by speech alone he produces the same ef[ 42 ]

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fects as a real spectacle].35 The underlying assumption of this statement is that the transferral of a real spectacle to discourse entails a weakening of the spectacle’s emotional effect, whence the “esteem” due to a poet who manages to produce the same effect through words alone. Like Aristotle, La Mesnardière admits the power of spectacle. “Personne ne peut douter” [No one can doubt], he writes, “que de toutes les idées qui s’impriment dans les esprits par le ministère des sens, celles qui entrent par les yeux ne soient les plus agissants” [that of all the ideas that are impressed upon the mind by the senses, those that enter by the eyes are the most effective].36 This is the sense in which it was considered easier to affect the audience through spectacle than through discourse. Recognizing the power that immediate, ocular apprehension has over the mind, La Mesnardière further explores the relationship between spectacle and the passions in his discussion of scenic violence. Le Poëte auroit moins de peine à produire, cet effet par les afflictions visibles, que s’il les vouloit faire naistre par l’artifice des parolles; Et il lui seroit plus facile de tirer de la Pitié d’une large effusion de sang, & de provoquer la Terreur par la monstre des coupables qui endureroient les supplices, que d’exciter ces sentiments par la seule relation des maux qu’ils viendroient de souffrir. 37 [The poet would have less trouble producing this effect by visible afflictions than if he wanted to produce them through the artfulness of words. And it would be easier to elicit pity with a great outpouring of blood, and to provoke terror by the sight of guilty parties being punished than to excite these feelings by narrating the harm they suffered.]

Here, La Mesnardière characterizes “l’artifice des parolles” and “la seule relation” as less emotionally powerful than visible manifestations of pain and suffering, such as a great deal of blood and the punishment of a criminal—or the representation of a martyrdom. When, then, deny the poet the most natural and effective means to produce pathos, the third constituent element of tragedy? The problem with visual violence lies in its power to affect any and all spectators, irrespective of social class or education. The affective shock of the spectacle “bypasses,” as John Lyons writes of the visceral emotion horror, “the veneer of civility.”38 For critics and playwrights concerned with securing a legitimate place for theater in French society, the spectacle’s reach across social boundaries held dangerously democratic undertones. Hélène Merlin-Kajman’s work on the relationship between nascent absolutism and the academic legislation of literature brings [ 43 ]

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into sharp focus the dangers of excessive and uncontrollable pathos. The audience, overcome with emotion, would become incapable of acting or, as Merlin-Kajman succinctly puts it, “la force de souffrir l’emporte sur la puissance d’agir” [the strength of suffering overrides the power to act].39 In this way, the excessive pathos inspired by the spectacle threatened to disrupt civil order in the same way that it disrupts poetic order: “C’est une faute notable, & qui choque autant les Règles qu’elle travaille les yeux, que de choisir un Sujet qui ensanglante trop la scène” [Choosing a subject that bloodies the stage too much is a conspicuous defect that contravenese the rules as much as it tires the eyes].40 Most importantly, the spectacle’s force may shatter the faith (Chapelain’s “foi poétique”) that the playwright worked so hard to acquire from his audience. In the Trois Discours, Corneille advises playwrights to abstain from the visual representation of anything that might “diminuer quelque chose de la croyance que l’Auditeur doit à l’Histoire” [diminish something of the belief that the listener owes to the story].41 Invoking Horace’s Ars poetica (185–188), he cites as examples of ubelievable spectacles best kept to the wings of the stage Medea killing her children or Thyestes cooking those of his brother Atreus: “l’horreur de ces actions engendre une répugnance à les croire, aussi bien que la Métamorphose de Progné en oiseau, et de Cadmus en serpent” [the horror of these acts generates an aversion to believing them, as do the metamorphosis of Procne into a bird and Cadmus into a serpent].42 For Corneille, Medea’s infanticide and the metamorphosis of human beings into animals, drastically different events from a moral point of view, are of a piece when it comes to guaranteeing the spectator’s faith in the drama unfolding before his or her eyes. As we saw in the previous chapter, faith is the cornerstone of poetry, including (and especially) dramatic poetry. The horror engendered by watching Medea murder her children and difficulty of convincingly staging a metamorphosis both threaten to disabuse the spectator of his or her erstwhile faith in the performance. For this reason, Corneille, like La Mesnardière, D’Aubignac, and others, counsels keeping such events hidden from the eyes of the spectator and substituting a verbal account in its stead. Even though the “récit frappe moins que le Spectacle” [verbal account has less of an impact than the spectacle] it “nous impose plus aisément” [urges us [to believe] more comfortably].43 In admitting the power of the spectacle to penetrate the mind through the eye and at the same time discouraging the poet from availing himself of spectacular effects, early modern critics like La Mesnardière evince a suspicion of the eye similar to that held by the antitheatrical Church Fathers. Although their goals were radically different, both theater’s reformers and the church’s early [ 44 ]

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theologians worry about the effects of spectacle on the spectator and accordingly propose substitutions. The Church Fathers channeled the pleasures of the spectacle into theologically sanctioned spectacula christiana. On the other hand, early modern critics channeled the same pleasures into discourse, the (poetically) legitimtate means to represent violence, monsters, metamorphosis, and other visually powerful scenes. At heart in both attitudes toward spectacle is conversion. For the Church Fathers, it was a question of converting (in every sense, including religious, of the word) the pagan arena and theater into an edifying spectacle worthy of Christian audiences. For theater’s seventeenth-century reformers, the question concerned the conversion of spectacle’s uncontrollable force into language that would gain the spectator’s assent while stimulating the imagination. Yet whereas the early theologians fully availed themselves of the spectacle’s force in substituting one violent image (e.g., martyrdom) for another (e.g., gladiatorial battle) and later preachers, such as Bossuet, exploited violent imagery in order to shake, as it were, spectators from their tepid complacency, theater’s early modern reformers sought to attenuate something of that spectacular force so as to gently acquire the spectator’s assent. Martyrological theater, then, seemingly results in an impossible configuration: how might a playwright convey the full force of martyrdom without staging the martyr’s suffering? Nicolas Mary Desfontaines’s 1643 tragedy Le Martyre de saint Eustache offers an intriguing avenue out of that theoretical impasse. Though the play culminates with the martyrdom of Eustache and his family in the belly of a brazen bull, their suffering is transmuted into glory as bewildered pagan spectators bear witness to the martyrs’ apotheosis. Desfontaines’s Le Martyre de saint Eustache (1643)

Eustathius (also rendered Eustathios, Eustachius, or Eustace) was one of the most popular saints during the medieval and early modern periods. The patron saint of hunters, he also figured among the “Fourteen Holy Helpers,” a constellation of saints whose intercession was believed to be especially effective, and thus enjoyed a wide, popular following. A warrior whose martyrdom and ultimate victory over paganism placed him among the saints, he appealed as a figure of the church militant, capable of conquering heresy at home and evangelizing abroad, making him a favorite Counter-Reformation saint.44 Additionally, as an amalgam of the familiar Biblical tales of Job and Paul, Eustathius’s passion is an account of both [ 45 ]

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steadfast suffering and dramatic conversion. In particular, Eustathius’s resilience in the face of numerous misfortunes (his house burns down, his wife is kidnapped by a pirate, his children are whisked away by wild animals) made him an exemplar of patience. Jean Baudoin (1590–1650), in his Saintes métamorphoses (1644), ends his account of Eustathius’s life with an “Advis aux personnes de condition, diuersement affligées” [Notice to people of condition, variously suffering] in which he encourages noble men and women to reflect on the life of Eustathius when overcome with spiritual, physical, or material burden.45 Although once a popular saint, Eustathius’s legend was eventually declared to be wholly fabricated and the saint consequently demoted. It is thus worthwhile to recount, briefly, his legend here. Placidus, a Roman soldier, was hunting in the forest when he spotted a magnificent stag, which he pursued, leaving behind his hunting companions. When he came upon the beast he was stopped in his tracks by a miraculous vision: between the stag’s antlers appeared an image of the Crucifix. A voice then spoke to him, and he immediately converted. When he returned home to his wife Theopista, he described his vision, whereupon his wife too converted. Together with their two sons, Placidus and Theopista were baptized (Placidus taking the name Eustathius, meaning “fruitful”). Returning to their home, they find it destroyed by a fire. This is the first of many misfortunes to befall Eustathius and try his fortitude. Soon after, his wife is whisked away by a pirate and his children carried off by wild animals. Left alone, Eustathius seeks comfort in anchoretic solitude. Meanwhile, the Emperor dispatched a number of guards to locate his lost soldier. They find Eustathius and bring him back to the palace. There, he is reunited with his wife and sons. Rather than give thanks to the pagan deities, they profess their Christian faith. Diocletian has them put into a brazen bull to be roasted alive.46 Given Eustathius’s popularity, it is no surprise that his cult is reflected in the many literary and artistic works devoted to him during the seventeenth century. The construction of the Eglise de Saint-Eustache, which was consecrated on April 26, 1637, by the Archbishop of Paris, Jean-François Gondi (1584–1654), gave wealthy benefactors the opportunity to commission paintings and statues celebrating the saint’s life (and their own largess). The painter Simon Vouet (1590–1649) executed two magnificent paintings on the subject: The Martyrdom of Saint Eustache and The Apotheosis of Saint Eustache and his family, still on display in the church. Writers also celebrated the cult of Eustathius. Nicolas de Rye, a priest at the church, published in 1637 a life of the saint. Antoine Godeau composed a narrative poem about Eustathius, included in his Poësies chrestiennes (1663). Both [ 46 ]

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Jean-François Senault and René de Ceriziers preached sermons in the saint’s honor, which were later published. Eustathius was also the subject of several plays. In 1632 Pierre Bello, a priest at Dinant, published his Martyre de saint Eustache. In 1649 Balthazar Baro published his Sainct Eustache martyr, which was performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne some ten years earlier.47 Nicolas Mary Desfontaines’s Martyre de saint Eustache was published in 1643 and possibly performed one year earlier at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, around the same time that Corneille’s Polyeucte appeared on the planks of the Théâtre du Marais. Unfortunately, we have no proof that it was actually performed. Given the rivalry between the two theaters, it is however very likely that the actors of the Hôtel de Bourgogne performed Desfontaines’s Eustache to compete with Corneille’s tragedy during the 1642–1643 season.48 We also know that the Hôtel de Bourgogne, formerly the playhouse of the Confrérie de la Passion and site of religious mystery plays, possessed the necessary accoutrements to pull off the elaborate scenery required by Desfontaines’s play. Finally, the existence of three editions issued in 1643 suggests that the play must have enjoyed a certain immediate success, at the very least as a closet drama. We do not know much about the author of Le Martyre de saint Eustache either.49 An actor as well as a playwright, he joined Molière’s Illustre Théâtre in June 1644, just six months after Molière’s company arrived in Paris and set up shop in the jeu de paume des Métayers, a tennis court tranformed into a performance space. It is possible that Desfontaines’s two other hagiographical tragedies, L’Illustre Olympie (1644) and L’Illustre Comédien (1645) may have been performed by the members of Molière’s company, possibly furnishing him with the material for the feigned religious belief of Dom Juan (1665) and Tartuffe (1664).50 In additional to his three hagiographical tragedies, Desfontaines was the author of several other plays, including Bélisaire (1641), which features a persecuted innocent not unlike what one finds in martyrological theater. Le Martyre de saint Eustache departs significantly from the conventions of neoclassical French tragedy. Violating the unities of time, place, and action, the play follows Eustache’s peregrinations from the woodland clearing where he converts to his home, then from Rome to the wilderness in Asia Minor, where he seeks refuge from the world, and finally back to Rome. There are also scenes of kidnapping, disguise, mistaken identities, and family reunions that are common tragicomedic, but not tragic, conventions. The play’s eccentricity is in part a result of its subject. The legend of Eustathius is one of the most fabulous in hagiography, calling to mind the meandering narratives of the early modern pastoral and heroic [ 47 ]

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novels that were especially popular in the 1640s and 1650s. In fact, René de Cériziers (1609–1662), the urbane and cultivated almoner of the Duc d’Orléans and then Louis XIV, wrote that the tale of Eustathius rivaled the most popular novels of the day and ought to replace them as leisure reading that could be as spiritually profitable as it was entertaining. A frequent guest at Madame de Rambouillet’s famous salon, Cériziers was familiar with the literary tastes of his flock and accordingly tailored his output, issuing in particular a popular translation of Augustine’s City of God (in the preface of which he expresses hope that the translation will appeal to women in particular) and a life of the semilegendary heroine Geneviève de Brabant that was an instant and lasting best-seller. In addition, he composed a twelve-volume set of hagiographical panegyrics, Les eloges sacrez ou la vie des saints, which appeared in 1661. In his panegyric to Eustathius, Cériziers repeats the argument that we saw in Tertullian according to which Christianity offers entertainment that is as much if nor more pleasurable than profane genres. “Trouue-t’on des euenements plus surprenans, & partant qui plaisent plus, que ceux de nos Histoires?” [Do we find events more surprising, and consequently more pleasing, than what we find in our histories?], he asks.51 The lives of the saints, episodes of Christian history (“nos Histoires”) are at least as likely to entertain as secular literature inspired by a pagan past. The life of Eustathius is so rich that it surpasses even the most famous novels of the time: Ie n’en produis qu’vne seule [Histoire], pour confondre tous les Amadis. Qu’on iuge s’il y a rien de plus merueilleux; rien qui descouure mieux l’inconstance de la fortune & les prouidences de Dieu, que ce que ie vais escrire. Eustache . . . ce mesme Placide, dont Iosephe parle dans ses Guerres. 52 [I have only to choose a single story to confound all the Amadis. Judge for yourself if there is anything more wondrous, anything that better demonstrates fortune’s uncertainty and God’s providence, than what I am going to write. Eustache . . . this same Placide, whom Josephus mentions in his Jewish War.]

Blurring the boundaries between history, hagiography, and literature, Cériziers presents his readers with a saint’s life and martyrdom—a spectaculum christianum— that contains “trop de merueilleux accidents, pour ne pas plaire” [too many marvelous incidents not to please].53 [ 48 ]

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In Le Martyre de saint Eustache, Desfontaines exploited the richly entertaining potential of the martyr’s legend as much as, and perhaps more than, he sought to remain faithful to the hagiographical source. Moreover, of all the saints’ lives, Eustathius’s may be one of the most spectacular. Still known as Placide, Eustathius encounters an unusual deer while hunting and beholds a vision of the crucified Christ shining between the cervid’s antlers. The vision speaks to him, whereupon he converts. At the end of his passion, Eustathius and his family are placed inside a brazen bull to be roasted alive. Desfontaines opens his play immediately after the vision, with the principal character’s sudden conversion (1.1). Eustache later recounts the details of his vision to his wife, Théopiste (1.2). Even more remarkably, Desfontaines closes his play with the spectacle of the brazen bull. Here, Le Martyre de saint Eustache is striking in its deployment of music and stage machinery. An angel descends from the sky, likely by means of a “flying machine,” bearing the palm and crown of martyrdom, and hovers over the brazen bull while singing a heavenly song.54 The angel then returns to heaven, presumably with the souls of Eustache and his family, to the astonishment of the pagan spectators who suddenly convert and depart to bury the martyrs’ bodies. Le Martyre de saint Eustache was not the only hagiographical tragedy to incorporate music and spectacular scenery, but, along with Jean Puget de la Serre’s Sainte Catherine (1643), it is a rare example of such hagiographical excess on the Parisian stage.55 In this way, Desfontaines’s Martyre de saint Eustache runs against the grain of most of the martyrological theater of the 1640s, in which, to quote Pierre Pasquier, “il y avait beaucoup à entendre, mais il n’y avait quasiment rien à voir” [there was much to hear, but there was almost nothing to see].56 Pasquier attributes martyrological theater’s demise in Paris to the inability to stage the martyr’s suffering within the constraints imposed by neoclassical poetics. Without the suffering body of the martyr on view, there is no martyrdom. In this chapter I take a different view, arguing that the martyr’s suffering is transmuted by music and stage machinery into a “total spectacle” that consciously breaks with Aristotelian conventions in order to convey the rapturous beatitude of the saint, whose suffering, after all, is a kind of pleasure: patientiae voluptas. Cruel Inventions: The Brazen Bull

In the final act of Desfontaines’s tragedy, the exasperated emperor Adrian condemns Eustache and his family to death by being roasted alive inside a brazen bull, their charred remains later to be scattered in the wind. [ 49 ]

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Adrian. Je veux que le supplice inventé par Busire De ces fâcheux objets délivre cet Empire; Et puis, que tous leurs corps par le feu consumés, Soient au gré des Zephyrs sur la poudre semés.57 [Hadrian. I want the torment invented by Busiris To deliver this Empire of these troublesome objects; And, when their bodies have been consumed by the fire, Their ashes scattered to the wind.]

The “supplice inventé par Busire” is better known as the “bull of Phalaris” for it was not, in fact, invented by Busiris, a mythological Egyptian ruler, but by Phalaris, sixth-century tyrant of Acragas in Sicily. The device, originally constructed for Phalaris by a man named Perillaus, was a large bronze bull with a hollow belly. The victim would be placed inside and a fire set beneath the bull. As though roasting alive were not horrifying enough, Perillaus further devised an elaborate set of tubes leading from the interior chamber to the bull’s nostrils, thereby transforming the victim’s cries of agony into the bellowing of a bull. Allegedly, this particularly dehumanizing element was intended to prevent Phalaris from feeling any pity for the victim: Savage too was that inventor of the bronze bull (aeni tauri) in which men were shut and fires lit underneath, so that they were forced by long and hidden torture to give out breath producing a sound like lowing (mugitus), lest their howls extorted in the sound of the human voice should implore the pity (misericordiam implorare possent) of the tyrant Phalaris. 58

According to another account the tubes were to be placed on the bull’s nostrils and would transform cries of pain into sweet music. So he made the bull and came to me with it, a very beautiful thing to look at and a very close copy of nature; motion and voice were all it needed to make it seem actually alive. . . . “If you wish to punish anyone, make him get into this contrivance and lock him up; then attach these flutes to the nose of the bull and have a fire lighted underneath. The man will groan and shriek in the grip of unremitting pain, and his voice will make you the sweetest possibly music on the flutes, piping dolefully and lowing piteously; so that while he is punished you are entertained by having the flutes played to you.”59 [ 50 ]

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Whether bestial lowing or sweet music, the brazen bull’s sound effects muted human suffering. A tale of cruel irony, Perillus was the first victim, succumbing to his own invention. Phalaris also met his end in the belly of the bull, when an uprising led by Telemachus overthrew him. The brazen bull was allegedly used against a number of Christians during Roman persecutions. Eustache is the martyr most often associated with the brazen bull, but he and his companions were not the only ones to meet their end this way. In his Trattato degli instrumenti di martirio e delle varie maniere di martirizzare (1591), the Oratorian priest Antonio Gallonio (1556–1605) describes the bull’s construction and function by citing classical sources, including Lucian and Ovid, before naming Eustache, Antipas of Pergamon, and Pelagia of Tarsus as the martyrs who died in the bull.60 While the existence of the bull may be entirely fabricated and it is probable that its appearance in the life of Eustathius was intended to increase the emotional effect of the account, it nevertheless deserves some attention, for its significance in art and literature is considerable. Perillaus’s and Phalaris’s demise in the extraordinary instrument they created to be deployed against others guaranteed the brazen bull a long literary fortune.61 In particular, the bull frequently appears as a moral exemplum of ironic retribution or, to put it in more modern terms, a kind of karmic return according to which the perpetrators of injustice will themselves suffer the effects of their cruelty. The bull appears, for example, in Jean-Jacques Boissard’s Emblematum liber (1593) with the motto malum consilium consultori pessimum [bad counsel is most dangerous for the one who gives it].62 Similarly, the Jesuit priest and author Pierre Le Moyne’s L’Art des devises (1666) features an engraving of the bull, with the motto obsunt auctoribus artes [the arts injure [their] authors]. The emblem further explains that “Le même arrive souvent à tous les ingénieurs de la cruauté; leurs inventions retombent sur leurs têtes” [like often comes to all invetors of cruelty; their inventions fall back upon their heads].63 The lesson of the bull is a cautionary tale: the perpetrators of cruel acts will themselves become victims of cruelty. The fact that Desfontaines deploys antonomasia by referring to the punishment as the “supplice inventé par Busire” suggests a certain erudition on the part of the author, who must have assumed that such a reference would not be lost on the audience. Through the staging of the brazen bull, Desfontaines seizes the opportunity to merge the classical and humanist emblem of ironic retribution with the martyrological trope of the remorseful tyrant. In the penultimate scene of the play, Eustache and his family having exited the stage, the tyrant Adrian is overcome by a “soudaine horreur” [sudden horror] that “tyrannise [s]on âme” [tyrannizes [his] soul]. [ 51 ]

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Transports, rages, fureurs, dieux! vengeance, courroux, Quelle soudaine horreur tyrannise mon âme? Placide m’a fait grand, je le détruis pour vous, Votre seul intérêt le condamne à la flamme. Son bras qui fut l’appui du trône où je me vois Et qui prit ma défense A pour sa réconpense L’épouvantable arrêt que prononce ma voix. 64 [Transports, rage, fury, gods! Vegeance, anger, What sudden horror tyrannizes my soul? Placidus made me great, I destroy him for you, Your interest alone condemns him to the flames. His hand, which was the support of the throne where I sit And which defended me Receives in recompense The dreadful edict that my voice pronounced.]

The choice of verb (“tyrannise”) clearly winks at Adrian’s own tyrannical action in sentencing Eustache and his family to a horrifying death. To the illustration of the emblematic lesson “bad counsel is most dangerous to the one who gives it,” Desfontaines adds a hagiographical layer: the tyrant’s remorse and divine punishment. Adrian’s lyrical soliloquy conveys his emotional turmoil, evoking not only his remorse at ordering the execution of Eustache and his family, but also his divine punishment: “Et s’il faut Ciel ingrat enfin que je périsse / Venge les innocents, et hâte mon supplice” [And if, ungrateful Heavens, I should perish / Avenge the innocents and hasten my punishment].65 The remorseful tyrant is a common trope in religious theater. The martyrological remorseful tyrant serves as the martyr’s negative image, contrasting the ephemerality of temporal power with the eternity of divine power. Desfontaines further underscores the tyrant’s reversal of fortune by transforming the attributes of imperial authority—the throne, the crown, the scepter—into the terrible accoutrements of an execution: the throne becomes a scaffold, the crown a blindfold, the scepter an executioner’s blade, and the tyrant himself the executioner. Pourpre, Sceptre, grandeur, sanglante Majesté Où mon âme rencontre un mortel précipice Dans les trompeurs objets de ma prospérité J’ai tous les instruments d’un funeste supplice: [ 52 ]

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Mon Trône est l’échafaud, ma Couronne un bandeau, Mon Sceptre est une épée Dont ma tête est frappée, Ma Cour est une prison, et moi-même un bourreau. 66 [Purple, Scepter, greatness, blood-stained Majesty Where my soul encounters a fatal precipice In the deceptive objects of my prosperity I have all the instruments of a woeful punishment: My Throne is a scaffold, my Crown a blindfold, My Scepter is a sword That strikes my head, My Court is a prison, and I myself an executioner.]

Adrian’s transformation from sovereign to subject, from persecutor to persecuted, and from executioner to victim echoes Placide’s own radical transformation from pagan to Christian in Act 1, but whereas Placide enthusiastically embraces a new life, Adrian is overcome with regret. “Oui Séigneur j’obéis à ton divin Oracle, / Qui . . . / Fait un humble sujet de ton Persécuteur, / Et change un Idolâtre en ton adorateur” [Yes, Lord I obey your divine Oracle, / That . . . makes of our Persecutor a humble subject, / And changes an idolator into your worshipper].67 Similarly, whereas Eustache’s misfortunes led him to a glorious martyrdom and the “Empire céleste” [celestial empire] (l.1502), Adrian’s former good fortune is now revealed to be illusory. Having wrongly believed that the “deceptive objects” of his royal office—throne, crown, and scepter—endowed him with absolute authority, he now realizing that by overextending his sovereignty, they have lost their earlier significance and are now “instruments of a woeful punishment.” This conversion recalls the portrait of the sovereign (Trajan) in the first scene of Act 2, where he appears holding a scepter in one hand, a sword in the other.68 Reflecting on his authority, Trajan contrasts the “aimables charmes” [attractive charms] of the scepter, “ce foudre d’or” [this golden lightning bolt], with the sword, “la foudre . . . pour punir l’ennemi” [the lightning bolt that punishes the enemy].69 The dual powers of the sovereign are not equal; for Trajan recognizes that bestowing favors and gifts is the easiest way to win the hearts of his subjects. Favors “triomphent des coeurs beaucoup mieux que les armes, / Et c’est par ce moyen digne de ma grandeur, / Que je veux animer cette fidèle ardeur” [triumph over hearts much better than weapons, / This is the way, worthy of my greatness, / That I want to animate faithful devotion].70 The sovereign’s liberality clashes [ 53 ]

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with the Christians’ convictions when they are promised “biens” [goods] and “faveurs” [favors] (l.1456) in exchange for honoring the pagan gods. Agapie and Théopiste, Eustache’s children, denounce the emperor’s gifts as “lâches caresses” [weak caresses] (l.1457), thereby sealing their fate. Forced to turn toward “la foudre . . . pour punir” because liberality proved ineffectual, Adrian soon discovers that punishment, too, does not have the indended effect. Eustache and his family do not fear the emperor’s threats and embrace their fate. As Elizabeth Castelli has noted, “[m]artyrdom always implies a broader narrative that invokes notions of justice and the right ordering of the cosmos” and the “conflict between early Christians and Roman imperial authorities is precisely” “over order and narrative.”71 In this way, Adrian’s conversion from fortune to desolation, underscored by the transformation of the royal insignia, figures the (unsuccessful) counternarrative to Eustache’s religious conversion and martyrdom. Where Adrian sought victory, he found only defeat. Such reordering recasts the spectacle of punishment as a spectaculum christanum. It is the brazen bull that joins the tyrant’s loss and the martyrs’ victory, fusing the humanist and martyrological interpretations into a single figure of conversion. Through the brazen bull, Adrian loses while Eustache triumphs. But the spectacular scenography with which Defontaines closes his tragedy also recalls the construction of the brazen bull itself as an instrument of artistic conversion: transforming human cries of pain into the lowing of a bull or the sweet sound of flutes. The musicologist John T. Hamilton has noted that the mythological origins of music and musical instruments nearly always involve some component of torture, such as Apollo’s flaying the satyr Marsyas.72 The brazen bull perhaps best exemplifies the transmutation of pain into pleasure and of horror into beauty. As we shall see, Desfontaines merges martyrdom and myth to create a “total work of art” that appeals directly to the senses. Toward the end of Act 5, scene 6, Adrian, exasperated, commands that the Christians be roasted inside the bull and they speedily depart (“Allons, allons enfants, ne craignons pas les choses” [Come, come, children, let us not fear] l.1525). The deaths of the martyrs take place out of sight during the following scene, in which Adrian laments, as we just saw, his change in fortune. During this time, he hears the bull’s lowing but, unlike the mythological bull of Phalaris, which was designed to prevent any feeling of remorse, Desfontaines’s bull speaks with a “triste voix” [sad voice] (l.1561) that “doit attirer [l]es larmes” [must cause tears] (l.1562). Desfontaines’ tyrant is not exempt from suffering. Adrian’s lyrical monologue not only heightens the emotion ( pathos) of his lament, it also conveys the sounds of [ 54 ]

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human suffering. This expression of pain, however, does not come from the victims within the bull, but from its victim outside. Conversely, Eustache, his wife Trajane, and their children experience the pain of the brazen bull as pleasure. “Allons, allons enfants” [Come, come, children], Trajane encourages her children, “[n]ous serons dans les feux comme en un lit de roses” [we will be in the flames as though on a bed of roses] (ll.1524–1525). In direct contrast to the scepter that becomes an executioner’s sword, the flames become, through a kind of Christian alchemy, flowers. The transformation of pain into pleasure is a common martyrological trope. Jean Rotrou, in Le Véritable saint Genest, will use a similar expression: “Il semble que les feux soient des fleurs sous tes pas” [It seems that the flames are flowers beneath his feet] (l.296). Corneille’s Pauline best expresses the paradoxical pleasure of martyrdom when she attempts to convince her father that rigorous punishment will hardly suceed in bringing Polyeucte back into the pagan fold: Le trépas n’est pour eux ni honteux ni funeste; Ils cherchent de la gloire à mépriser nos dieux; Aveugles pour la terre, ils aspirent aux cieux; Et croyant que la mort leur en ouvre la porte, Tourmentés, déchirés, assassinés, n’importe, Les supplices leur sont ce qu’à nous les plaisirs, Et les mènent au but où tendent leurs désirs; La mort la plus infâme, ils l’appellent martyre.73 [Death for them is neither shameful nor baneful; They seek glory in looking down on our gods; Blind to the earth, they aspire to the heavens; Believing that death will open the door, Tormented, torn apart, killed, it doesn’t matter, Torture is to them what to us is pleasure, And it leads them to the object they desire; The most scandalous death they call martyrdom.]

Pauline, with remarkable perspicacity for a pagan character, explains that the Christian contempt for this world (the theological and philosophical tradition of contemptus mundi) renders torture and death ineffective means of persuasion. It is, after all, precisely what the Christians seek. If martyrdom posits a counternarrative to the narrative of temporal justice and punishment, as Castelli has shown, [ 55 ]

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then the transformation of torment into pleasure serves to demonstrate the radical alterity of the martyrological narrative. At the same time, it demonstrates, for the faithful, the paradoxical power of the martyr whose triumph coincides perfectly with his defeat and whose spiritual birth, with his physical death.74 Or, as Brad S. Gregory puts it in his study of martyrdom in early modern Europe, “the martyr’s agency depended upon relinquishing control, their strength upon a naked admission of their utter impotence and total dependence on God.”75 This paradox becomes crucial for distinguishing martyrs from virtuous pagans, Stoic heroes who similarly suffer torment with extraordinary equanimity. Whereas, for Stoic heroes, the strength to endure suffering comes from within, for the martyrs, it comes from without.76 François de Sales, in his immensely popular Introduction à la vie dévote (1609), notes that “les feux, les flammes, les roues et les épées semblaient des fleurs et des parfums aux Martyrs, parce qu’ils étaient dévots” [fire, flames, wheels, and swords seemed like flowers and perfumes to the martyrs, because they were devout].77 According to the martyrological narrative, it is not by any inherent virtue that Eustache and his family experience flames as flowers and pain as pleasure, but rather through faith. The conversion of pain into pleasure is complete with the tragedy’s final, miraculous spectacle of the apotheosis of the martyrs. Adrian’s lyrical lament prepared this scene thematically—the tyrant’s despair paves the way for the martyrs’ glorious victory—and also dramaticaly, for the first sounds of the bellowing bull (the “triste voix”) are heard during the lament. Whether or not the “triste voix” was in fact heard by the play’s spectators is beside the point; that Adrian hears the bull is enough to suggest an audible link between the two scenes, such that the first serves as a prelude for the final scene. Here, Adrian having left the stage, two of his courtiers, Procule and Acace, bear witness to the miraculous apparition of an angel who descends, presumably to recover the souls of Eustache, Trajane, Agapie, and Théopiste, and returns to heaven. L’ange, Tenant des palmes, et des couronnes sur l’ouverture du Taureau brûlant chante l’air ensuivant. Athlètes glorieux Qui dans ces vives flammes Comme l’or épurez vos âmes, Montez avecque nous à la gloire des cieux Pour chanter les louanges De ce Maître des Anges Qui des Tyrans vous fait victorieux. [ 56 ]

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Il remonte au Ciel en chantant. Procule. O spectacle charmant! Acace. O céleste merveille! Procule. O prodige! O faveur à nulle autre pareille! C’est le Dieu des Chrétiens qui se fait admirer, Et c’est le seul aussi qu’il nous faut adorer: Bénissons avec eux cette heureuse aventure, Et tous à ces saints corps donnons la sépulture.78 [The Angel, holding palms and crowns above the opening of the burning Bull sings the following air. Glorious athletes, Who in these lively flames, Like gold purify your souls, Ascend with us to celestial glory To sing the praises Of the Chief of the Angels Who makes you triumph over the Tyrants.

He returns to the sky singing. Procule. O enchanting spectacle! Acace. O heavenly marvel! Procule. O wonder! O unequalled favor! This is the Christians’ God who we admire, The only one we ought to worship: With them [the Christians] let us bless this happy occasion, And give these holy bodies a proper burial.]

Desfontaines’s tragedy ends with an eruption of music and spectacular stage effects. The angel’s presence both guarantees the sanctity of the martyrs by conferring upon them the palm of martyrdom and the crown of eternal life and serves as a wondrous sign of divine power (“C’est le Dieu . . . qui se fait admirer”). Having descended from the sky, presumably by means of a flying machine, the angel sings the praises of the martyrs before the astonished courtiers and the spectators.79 The angel, along with the souls of the martyrs (“Montez avecque nous”) then returns [ 57 ]

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to the sky, leaving their holy bodies to be entombed and venerated as relics by the newly converted Procule and Acace. Eustache’s “heureuse aventure” is brought to a close on a strongly devotional note, driving home a lesson that is as much an echo of the Nicene Creed as it is an admonishment to abandon false divinities: “le Dieu des Chrétiens” is “le seul aussi qu’il nout faut adorer.” Moreover, Procule’s use of the first-person plural as well as the pronoun “tous” potentially incorporates not only the converted pagans on stage, but also devout spectators. Combining music and spectacular stage machinery, Desfontaines’s tragedy powerfully engages the eyes and the ears in what Bénédicte Louvat-Molozay calls an “esthétique du ravissement” [aesthetics of rapture], at odds with the rational logic of dramatic narrative.80 The final scene thus constitutes the transcendent counterpart to Adrian’s lyrical monologue. Where the emperor’s lament emphasized the impermanence of temporal power, the final spectacle celebrates triumph of an eternal order of things, one in which the martyrs will always emerge victorious. In this way, Desfontaines succeeds in conveying the miracle of martyrdom without staging painful scenes of suffering. Against the neo-Aristotelian framework advocated by theater’s reformers, the miraculous (from mirari, “to wonder at”) operates within the order of the irrational (rather than the coherent logic of plot-structure) and the spectacular (it must be seen and heard). It would seem, then, that the miraculous has no place in the theater. If we recall from chapter 1 that miracles are by there very nature both implausible and improbable, then there would seem to be no way for a poet to render a miracle verisimilar without diminishing something of its wondrous quality. And yet, in the Poetics, Aristotle writes that tragedy must include the marvelous or miraculous (to thaumaston). By seemingly equating the marvelous with the irrational (to alogon) which, strictly speaking, does not belong in tragedy, Aristotle introduces a tension not unlike the tension between spectacle (opsis) and plot (mythos) that we saw earlier. In fact, the epic more easily accommodates the marvelous because it permits the irrational: While the marvelous (to thaumaston) is called for in tragedy, it is epic which gives greater scope for the irrational (to alogon) (which is the chief cause of the marvelous), because we do not actually see (me horan) the agents. . . . The marvelous gives pleasure: this can be seen in the way that everyone exaggerates in order to gratify when recounting events.81

Much like his discussion of scenes of suffering (pathos) in Poetics 1452b10–13, Aristotle is at pains to incorporate the marvelous within his view of tragedy as a [ 58 ]

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coherent, logical composition of causally related events. As Stephen Halliwell has noted, this passage reveals “the underlying tension which can be detected in the Poetics: between, on the one hand, the essentially rationalizing criteria of probability (and hence of intelligibility and unity) called for by the theory; and, on the other, the irreducibility of the worlds portrayed in both tragedy and epic.”82 Indeed, subjects befitting tragedy and epic are necessarily extraordinary. Moreover, just as the passage concerning pathos evokes the primacy of sight through those “visible deaths” (en toi phaneroi thanatoi), so too does the conjunction of the marvelous and the irrational suggest a conflict between spectacle and language. Thauma, or “thing to behold,” derives from the same root as theater. Alogos (from logos “word” or “reason,” with the privative a-) means not only “irrational” but also “speechless” or “surd.” It is thus fitting that Procule and Acace express their astonishment at the apotheosis of the martyrs through exclamations: “O spectacle charmant!” “O céleste merveille!” Their sudden conversions, like that of Placide/Eustache at the tragedy’s outset, are miraculous and, as such, find their natural articulation in the courtiers’ collective wonder. Placide/Eustache’s vision in the first act is not staged; rather, Desfontaines opens his tragedy by articulating the conversion as a set of questions, underscoring the newly converted Christian’s inability to comprehend the vision he has just seen: “Quelle puissante voix a frappé mon oreille? / Qu’avez-vous vu mes yeux? quelle est cette merveille?” [What powerful voice has struck my ear? / What have you seen, my eyes? What is this marvel?]83 Like the “spectacle charmant” that occasions Procule’s conversion, Placide/Eustache descibes the vision as the “[d]oux charme de [s]es sens,” further underscoring the essentially irrational yet deeply sensual power of the miraculous vision. The “total spectacle” of the brazen bull—incorporating Adrian’s remorseful lament, the deaths and apotheosis of the martyrs, and the sudden conversions of the courtiers—thus brings the play full circle. At the play’s outset, Eustache’s vision is frustratingly out of sight; at the end of the play, the spectators are treated to a wondrous vision. Further, the spectacle of the brazen bull suggests the potential of theater to astonish through the eruption of the irrational, thereby transferring to the spectators the rapturous experience of martyrdom and conversion. Representations of sanctity, as Simon Ditchfield has noted, served Counter-Reformation artists as a means to represent the otherwise unrepresentable—rapture.84 While one could imagine a performance of Le Martyre de saint Eustache ending, like a good Aristotelian tragedy, with Adrian’s remorse and still maintain the coherence of its plot, it would fail to respresent the sanctity of the martyrs and [ 59 ]

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would fail to deliver on the spectacular potential promised at the outset. In her analysis of music in religious theater, Bénédicte Louvat-Molozay rightly observes that the incorporation of music is never gratuitous. Louvat-Molozay writes that music “n’a jamais, dans la tragédie religieuse, une fonction spectaculaire pure” [never has a purely spectacular function in religious tragedy]. The same can be said for spectacle. She concludes her brief analysis by noting the “tension, inhérente au genre, entre les plans humain et divin” [the genre’s inherent tension, between the human and divine planes] and “le thème de la transfiguration, qui est au cœur des tragédies chrétiennes” [the theme of transfiguration that is at the heart of Christian tragedies].85 The question of “transfiguration” is certainly at the heart of Desfontaines’s Martyre de saint Eustache: in the conversion of Placide/Eustache, in the remorse of the emperor, in the conversions of Procule and Acace, and especially in the spectacle of the brazen bull, the heat of which purifies the souls of the martyrs (“ces vives flammes / Comme l’or épurez vos âmes”). Desfontaines’s bull is the site of the martyrs’ apotheosis, that is to say their transformation into saints. But the figure of the brazen bull can itself serve as a symbol of transfiguration: converting, as Lucian writes, the cries of the victims into the pleasant melodies of a flute. As an instrument invented by a human being, the bull represents the power of artifice to transform pain into pleasure, which is, after all, the work of the poet: “for we take pleasure,” Aristotle writes, “in contemplating the most precise images of things whose sight in itself causes us pain—such as the appearanec of the bases animals, or of corpses.”86 The bull is a particularly cruel reminder that the poetic transfiguration of pain into pleasure may in fact obscure real human suffering, as Elaine Scarry has suggested.87 Unlike Phalaris’s victims, the martyrs do not suffer the torment of being roasted alive. Armed with their steadfast faith, they experience the flames as flowers. In turn, their suffering becomes heavenly music that charms the spectators both within and without the play. Yet the transformation of Eustache and his family from simple suffering bodies into “[a]thlètes glorieux” carries with it the potential to disguise or ignore real human suffering. Elizabeth Castelli’s moving meditation on the ethical problem of martyrdom is particulary apt here: “The violence suffered by the martyr comes to be glorified and spectacularized, rendering suffering itself a necessary component of their stories—and undermining sustainable critiques of the fact of suffering itself and the conditions that generate and nurture that suffering.”88 Castelli’s choice of the terms glorified and spectacularized is especially telling, for they link the ethical pitfalls of martyrdom with its [ 60 ]

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visual representation and the associated act of spectation. It is thus unsurprising that Bossuet admonished his audience not to remain “idle spectators” before his vivid portrayal of Victor’s ghastly martyrdom but to drink from the “bitter chalice,” joining him in suffering. For Bossuet, this is no mystical union with the saint. In nearly all of his Panégyriques, the preacher points toward real suffering in the world—the poor—impressing upon his listeners the ethical imperative to relieve that suffering, even if it means suffering themselves. For Desfontaines, on the other hand, the ethical dilemma is less acute. The dramatic adaptation of Eustathius and his family offered the playwright ready material for a spectacular machine play, in which the representation of the miraculous suggested an alternative to the prevailing trend in tragic drama toward a coherent, rational, and intelligible plot.89 We cannot, of course, know the playwright’s intentions, but it seems at least as likely that the choice of martyrdom was motivated by aesthetic considerations as by devotional ones. Eustathius’s legend offered dramatic plot twists and turns, miraculous visions, and, above all, the spectacle of the brazen bull in which suffering is transformed into song. Desfontaines’s staging of the brazen bull as a musical spectacle engaging both the eyes and the ears skirts the poetic problem of representing bodily suffering on stage while preserving the wondrous quality of martyrdom. Injunctions not to “bloody the stage,” then, did not necessarily entail a weakening of the representation of martyrdom. Instead, such constraints invited the playwright to convey the ineffable quality of the martyr’s rapture (and also of the unspeakable torment that he or she underwent) by eclipsing the suffering body with a dazzling scene of music and machinery. Sanctity thus serves to think about the limits of conventional dramatic representation and how to represent what would be, given those conventions, unrepresentable. Futher, by engaging the senses, the spectacle of the martyrs’ apotheosis incorporates the spectator in their rapturous experience. Desfontaines’s tragedy highlights the participatory nature of witnessing, both in a martyrological and a dramatic context: the spectator must not be left idle or cooly detached from the spectacle; indeed, any profit (moral or simply aesthetic) depends on his or her engagement. In this way, the visual dynamics of spectacula christiana—the conversion of raw spectacles into legitimate and spiritually edifying displays of virtue—characterize not only centuries of theological writing about the nature of the gaze, but also seventeenth-century theater reformers’ concern for transforming the stage into a site of collective pleasure and instruction.

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3 “EX HISTRIONIS M ARTYR FACTUS” Genesius, Acting, and Martyrdom

Genesius, the Converted Actor

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N T H I R D - C E N T U R Y R O M E , a pagan actor stepped onto the stage in the role of a Christian martyr. The play he would perform was to be a parody of the sacrament of baptism. In the course of the performance, however, something seemed amiss: the actor appeared to profess Christian doctrine with sincerity. Soon thereafter, he addressed the audience directly, still professing Christianity. The emperor, having asked him to stop—in vain—has the actor executed for blasphemy against the Roman deities. This is the legend of Saint Genesius of Rome, a third century actor who not only embraced Christianity, for which he was subsequently martyred, but who did so through acting. According to hagiographical sources, Genesius was an exceptional actor (magister mimithemelæ artis or “master of the mimetic/acting art”) whom Diocletian had asked to perform a play ridiculing Christians. During his performance, however, the actor actually converted. At the moment of his conversion, Genesius’s performance was no longer a facetious, parodical imitation, but a sincere profession of faith: Genesius, jam non simulate ac ficte, sed ex puro corde respondit [Genesius replied with a pure heart, not while pretending or acting].1 The actor’s response incensed Diocletian, who demanded that he renounce his faith. Obstinately refusing to recant, Genesius was tortured and put to death. The anonymous hagiographer notes, marginally: ex histrionis martyr factus. From an actor, a martyr was made. The martyred actor later became the patron of minstrels, actors, and other entertainers.2 It is a curious patronage. The actor’s profession had long been considered morally corrupt and spiritually destitute. Accordingly, one would expect an actor [ 62 ]

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who achieves sanctity to abandon his or her profession and engage a life of penitence. In other words, the actor’s conversion would entail turning away (convertere, “to turn around”) from his former profession.3 Indeed, religious writers exploited the figure of the converted actor to demonstrate the immense power of divine grace, capable of turning even the worst sinners. Thus, in “La comédienne convertie” [The Converted Actrice], a short story by Jean-Pierre Camus (1584–1652), bishop and prolific author of devotional literature, the narrator explains that God’s grace “va du Ciel esclairant & eschauffant toute la terre” [goes forth from the sky enlightening and warming the entire world] and that “il n’y a aucune condition tant soit elle deplorable qui ne se ressente de sa lumiere & de sa chaleur” [there is no condition, no matter how deplorable, that does not feel its light and its warmth].4 Acting figured among the most “deplorable” of professions and the story goes on to recount the miraculous effects of grace on an actress. Rosoria, the actress in question, had been playing the lead role in a “representation du Marytre de Saincte Cecile” [performance of the martyrdom of Saint Cecilia] when she was suddenly overcome by a “sacrée fureur” [holy madness] and abandoned her profession, taking up the veil in a convent.5 The moral of the story is clear: if even an actress can receive God’s abundant grace, then certainly it is within reach of the reader. Rosoria may be an exemplary figure of conversion through acting, but she does not appear to have attracted any writers other than the bishop of Belley. It was rather Genesius who furnished most writers with the prototype of the converted actor. Léon de Saint-Jean, the Carmelite friar who denounced the emblems of the Passion above the Hôtel de Bourgogne’s principal doorway, deployed Genesius as an example of the extraordinary “holy metamorphoses” wrought by divine agency: “N’a-t-on pas veu un S. Genét, le plus fameux Comedien de la Scene profane, se moquant en plein theatre des ceremonies du Batéme, donner sa tête pour servir de catastrophe mourant pour Iesvs-Christ?” [Have we not seen a Saint Genesius, the most celebrated actor of the profane stage, mocking the baptismal rites before all the spectators, offer, as a fatal conclusion, his head to Jesus Christ]?6 Note that the passage employs dramatic vocabulary (e.g., we “see” Genesius, his death serves as the “catastrophe” of his life) to apologetic ends, transforming the reader into a witness of a spectaculum christianum. Jean-François Senault similarly exploits Genesius’s legend to illustrate the potential for salvation even in the depths of sin. In L’homme chrestien (1647), he writes that grace fait quelquefois des coups qui passent pour des miracles . . . [q]uand elle toucha ce comedien qui se moquoit des ceremonies de nostre Religion, [ 63 ]

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qu’elle esclaira son esprit sur le theatre, qu’elle se servit de l’eau qu’il prophanoit pour en faire un Sacrement, & que par une conduite merveilleuse, elle luy fit trouver son salut dans le peché mesme, ce n’est point offenser son pouvoir que d’apeller cet effet un miracle. 7 [sometimes makes moves that seem to be miracles . . . when it reached that actor who was mocking the ceremonies of our religion and it illuminated his spirit on the stage, transformed the water that he was desecrating into a sacrament, and by a wondrous maneuver, it made him find salvation in sin itself, calling this effect miraculous in no way offends grace’s power.]

For religious writers, then, the converted actor illustrates the enormous power of divine grace to rescue even the worst sinners, foremost among them actors. Actors were Protean creatures whose ability to change identities at will and to do so convincingly called to mind Satan’s mendacious guile. They were passionate creatures, too, who brazenly embodied illicit passions that, as Bossuet wrote in his antitheatrical tract, a good Christian ought to stifle through penitence and prayer.8 Worse still, they did this for money, which likened them to prostitutes. And so the conversion of an actor, particularly when it takes place while acting (thereby finding “salut dans le peché mesme”), is a rare and miraculous occasion. In this view, Genesius represents the triumph of religion over the stage. At the same time, pro-theatrical writers mobilized the figure of Genesius to support the stage. For these writers, an actor-cum-saint does not so much demonstrate the power of grace to save the very worst sinners as prove that acting could be a noble and honest profession and the theater a suitably moral form of entertainment. “Actors can even be saints” they seem to say, reversing the terms of the religious lesson “even actors can be saints.” For example, Georges Scudéry (1601–1667), in his Apologie du théâtre (1639), places Genesius at the end of a list of actors who exercised noble professions in addition to acting: “il s’est trouué des Comediens qui ont . . . mérité [la Couronne] du Martyre, comme S. Ginesius, qui de la Scene ou il representoit, fit l’Eschafaut de son supplice, & le théâtre de sa gloire” [there have been actors who earned the crown of martyrdom, like Saint Genesius, who changed the stage where he was performing into the platform of his torture and the theater of his glory].9 Samuel Chappuzeau (1625–1701) echoed Scudéry’s use of Genesius as a defense of theater in his Théâtre François (1674): “Comme dans toutes sortes de professions il y a des gens qui viuent bien, & à qui il peut venir de saintes pensées, il est sorti un Martyr d’entre les Comediens, & un [ 64 ]

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saint Genest dont l’Eglise celebre la feste le 31 d’Aoust, a fini ses iours par une tres glorieuse Tragedie” [As in all kinds of professions there are people who live properly and to whom holy thoughts may come, from the ranks of actors came a martyr, a Saint Genesius, whose feast the Church celebrates on August 31, who finished his days with glorious tragedy].10 It is particularly telling that both writers play with dramatic terminology as did ecclesiastical writers like Léon de Saint-Jean. Instead of casting Genest’s performance as a spectaculum christianum opposed to the illicit spectacles of the world, Scudéry and Chappuzeau exploit it as a demonstration of the theater’s potentisl glory. Concrete dramatic terms take on a metaphorical dimension, calling to mind the early modern theatrum mundi commonplace according to which the entire world is a kind of stage. Genesius’s martyrdom was a spectacle that far surpassed his earlier performances because it was the ultimate performance and took place on the ultimate stage. It was, to borrow Paul’s expression, a “spectacle to the world, to angels, and to human beings.”11 Thus the stage becomes a “theater of glory” and his death a “glorious tragedy.” By converting the stage through his martyrdom, the actor-cum-saint has even broader implications than the defense of acting. Indeed, it is not only Genesius who converts but the stage itself, which now appears as a vehicle for divine grace, a Christian theater.12 But even a Christian theater is still theater, and so the Genesius legend, manipulated by pro-theatrical writers, is also a glorification of the stage. As Georges Forestier has noted, “pour le public de l’époque, voir des comédiens . . . qui accèdent à la sainteté constituaient assurément le meilleur des panégyriques” [for the public of the time, seeing actors achieve sanctity certainly constituted the best of panegyrics].13 A panegyric for acting, of course. It should come as no surprise, then, that such a figure would appeal to playwrights. In the seventeenth century, two Genesius plays appeared on the Parisian stage: Nicolas-Mary Desfontaines’s L’Illustre Comédien (1645) and Jean Rotrou’s Le Véritable Saint Genest (1646). As a figure of conversion, Genesius is ambivalent. He may represent, on the one hand, a turning away from the mendacious stage and toward a pious life, or, on the other hand, a transformation of the stage itself. This has been a problem for modern critics. Precisely because his conversion takes place while he is playing the role of a Christian, Genesius is hermeneutically uncertain. John Lyons has astutely remarked that the key rhetorical figure of Rotrou’s Le Véritable Saint Genest is aporia—a kind of interpretive impasse.14 It is possible to read his conversion as a genuine response to divine intervention or as a performance that had gone too far. Consequently, his execution may be read as an authentic martyrdom, a case of capital punishment for a disobedient actor who refused to leave the stage [ 65 ]

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or quit his role, both, or neither—something else altogether. It is indeed difficult to decide one way or the other without depleting the play of its energy. Is there a way out of this dilemma? Understood as an authentic conversion, the tragedy takes on an overtly apologetic dimension: the emphasis is on the miraculous intervention of grace. At the same time, divine intervention disrupts the embedded play, brings about Genest’s execution, and results in the dissolution of his theater company. Where the tragedy succeeds as a religious apology, it appears to fail as an apology for theater. If Genest’s conversion is understood in purely theatrical terms, then the tragedy succeeds in attesting to the power of theatrical illusion yet fails to allay the fear that illusion might lead to a loss of self. One interpretation seems to entail the negation of the other. The problem is summarized by Rotrou’s Genest himself when he exclaims, “Il s’agit d’imiter et non de devenir” [It’s a question of imitating, not becoming] (l. 420). The actor articulates his dilemma as an “either/or” statement: either he is acting the role of a Christian or he is becoming a Christian.15 The Genest plays thus ask a fundamental question: How do we distinguish between the real (“devenir”) and the feigned (“imiter”)? Furthermore, does it matter? In other words, while distinguishing between acting and being may have fatal consequences for Genest, what difference does it make to the spectator?16 The question of discerning between the true and the feigned at the heart of the Genest plays is not only a rhetorical or theatrical problem, but a theological one as well. The aporia that characterizes Genest’s conversion echoes Tertullian’s challenge to believe in the reality of the Incarnation because it is impossible. The Docetists argued that Christ’s nature was either divine or human. Further, since he is indeed God, then his human “body” must have been a phantasm, because it was inconceivable that an incorruptible spiritual entity should degrade itself by taking on a corruptible physical body. Tertullian countered that nothing is beyond God’s capabilites and in so doing undermined the binary upon which the Docetist position relied: “either/or” discloses the limits of rational apprehension and fails to account for the Incarnation’s crucial role in Christian soteriology. Moreover, martyrdom as “mimesis of the Passion and Death of Christ”17 or “imitatio Christi with a vengeance”18 suggests that imitation and becoming are not opposed to one another but in fact part of a single process of sanctification. This is not unlike Pascal’s provocative suggestion that nonbelievers act as though they believe until that acting becomes reality.19 Imitation—and the divide it implies between interiority and external behavior—is thus the first step toward incarnation—and the collapse of the distance between interior and exterior. [ 66 ]

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But the question of authenticity raises an even thornier problem in the realm of sacramental theology, namely, whether the sacraments are efficacious by virtue of the officiant (ex opere operantis) or by virtue of the ritual action itself (ex opere operato). The Catholic Church held the latter position, reaffirming it in 1547 during the seventh session of the Council of Trent.20 This did not mean that anyone could perform a sacrament or that the sacraments took effect as a kind of magical spell, independent of the subject’s belief and disposition. Nevertheless, the story of a pagan actor who converts through performance suggests an uncanny resemblance between sacramental and performance efficacy. Senault’s account of the Genesius legend offers a tantalizing suggestion that even parodical or feigned sacraments may be vehicles for salvation: “[la grâce divine] se servit de l’eau qu[e Genest] profanoit pour en faire un Sacrement” [divine grace employed the water that Genest desecrated as a sacrament].21 The water that had been a stage property intended to represent, that is, to imitate, baptismal water, acquired by divine intervention a sacramental dimension, effectively baptizing the actor. For Senault, then, the actor’s baptism by stage property suggests a radical instance of sacramental efficacy ex opere operato, through the performance of the baptism rite itself. Even though the rite was perfomed by professional actors and the water nothing but a stage property, in this instance imitation becomes indistinguishable from incarnation. In this case the efficacy of the theater (the belief, however provisional, that the stage property is the real thing) meets the efficacy of the sacraments (the belief in the sacrament’s power to effect change in the world) through performance. In this way, the either/or of Genest’s question—“imiter ou devenir”—dissolves as the two choices collapse into one. Genest’s “glorious theater” need not be secular or sacred; it can be both. In an essay on “virtual faith,” Anthony Kubiak challenges us to reconsider the relationship between the church and the stage. He asks that we abandon the view according to which the two are confrontational or oppositional in favor of a view of the church and the stage as complementary or, as he puts it, “asymptotic.”22 In other words, “the spiritual and the theatrical approach identity,” like the asymptote of a curve, without ever actually crossing, “yet in the diminishing gap between the two, the inversions [of theater and religion] somehow become more and more profound.”23 This allows for a more complicated understanding of the relationship between the two. For example, Kubiak cites the resemblance of dramatic dynamics to sacramental theology, noting that to say that “the seemingly false is realized” in the sacrament of the Eucharist, whereas the “seemingly real is falsified” in theater.24 This seems straightforward. In the sacrament, what is—the [ 67 ]

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body of Christ (transformed by the priest’s words hoc est enim corpus meum)— appears to be false: it looks like a wafer of bread. Conversely, in theater, what is— planks of wood, for example—appears to be something else: e.g., a king’s palace. But Kubiak points out that this neat relationship of inversion is insufficient, for “what appears to be real” in theater “is false,” while “what appears to be real in the sacrament . . . is also false.”25 Of course, for the believer, there is a reality beyond appearance, whereas any reality beyond the appearances of the stage is “arguable.”26 What ultimately matters in the “asymptotic” approach of religion and theater is the transformative effect of either. By dramatizing the legend of Genesius as a play-within-a-play, seventeenthcentury playwrights added another layer of theatricality, further complicating the relationship between the sacramental and the theatrical. Combining the structure of the play-within-a-play and martyrology, the dramatization of Genest’s final moments constitutes what Jean-Pierre Cavaillé has called “une auto-analyse du théâtre et de ses rapports avec le divin” [an auto-analysis of theater and its relationship to the divine].27 As Georges Forestier notes in Le Théâtre dans le théâtre, nearly all playwrights who employed some form of play-within-a-play seized the occasion to extol the virtues of their art.28 The play-within-a-play allowed the seventeenthcentury audience to see the actors at work rehearsing, to hear the opinions of the (play’s) spectators, to witness the effects of the (embedded) performance, all while experiencing a performance themselves. There is no doubt, then, that the Genest plays have an apologetic vocation. But, by adapting hagiographic material, they are doubly apologetic: if theater may be a vehicle for divine grace, it is because theater is, like the sacraments, effective. To this end, Desfontaines’ and Rotrou alter the hagiographical material significantly, adding encomiums to theater and exploiting the dramatic potential of an actor whose role becomes reality. The better known of the two seventeenth-century dramatizations of Saint Genesius’ martyrdom, Jean Rotrou’s Le Véritable Saint Genest, was performed in either 1645 or 1646 and published in 1647 and 1648 by Toussainct Quinet. In this play, the Roman emperor Dioclétian commands Genest to perform a tragedy on the occasion of his daughter Valérie’s marriage to Maximin. Genest, whose exceptional acting brought fame to the theater (1.5), undertakes to perform the role of a Christian martyr—indeed, the role to which he owes his renown (1.5). As Genest rehearses for the play he feels as though he is actually becoming his character (2.4).29 In the course of the performance, Genest converts, appears to forget his lines, and addresses his fellow actors directly, that is, by their real names (4.5). The incensed emperor commands that Genest be imprisoned, where the actor resists [ 68 ]

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the tearful entreaties of his wife Marcelle. Finally, despite the appeals of the rest of the theater company, Dioclétian orders Genest’s torture and execution, thereby bringing an end to the unfinished tragedy (the interior play). The remaining members of Genest’s company depart, crying, and the Roman spectators comment on the tragedy of the actor’s death. Nicolas-Mary Desfontaines’s contemporaneous tragedy, L’Illustre Comédien ou le Martyre de Saint Genest, published by Cardin Besogne in 1645 and again 1646, differs significantly from Rotrou’s tragedy in several details. Whereas Rotrou’s Genest performs the martyrdom of Adrian, Desfontaines’s actor performs an original play based on his own childhood. Dioclétian, deeply disturbed by the Christian “mal” [disease] that threatens to undermine his imperial authority by undermining that of the pagan gods, is confronted with the paradox of martyrdom: by executing Christians he actually swells their ranks! His advisor, Rutile, suggests that he use theater as anti-Christian propaganda to deal better with this hydra-like menace (1.1). Dioclétian summons a theater troupe to perform a comedic play mocking Christians. Genest is eager to do so, because his own family had converted when he was a child and he was forced to flee to Rome. Consequently, the actors perform the life of Genest himself (2.2). At this point, the two plays follow a similar trajectory: profession of faith, imprisonment, torture, and execution. As in Rotrou’s tragedy, Genest converts and, no longer obeying the script, addresses the emperor directly (3.2). Genest, imprisoned, receives his beloved Pamphilie, who herself converts (4.3). Both are put to death. If the dissolution of the theater company was merely suggested in Rotrou’s tragedy, Desfontaines makes their demise explicit: the final scene recounts the suicide of the remaining actors and actresses. Ultimately, Dioclétian is overcome with remorse as he realizes his human limitations (5.5).30 Both the tragedies’ presentation of an actor-cum-saint lends them an evangelical vocation. Indeed, Pierre Pasquier, in his substantial critical introduction to a recent edition of Rotrou’s tragedy, writes that the apologetic thrust of plays like Le Véritable saint Genest is clear. “Rotrou représente en effet, dans la pièce-cadre, la conversion miraculeuse d’un comédien au christianisme à l’époque des grandes persécutions et sa mort glorieuse sur un échafaud pour la foi qu’il a embrassée” [Rotrou effectively represents, in the frame-play, an actor’s miraculous conversion to Christianity during the great persecution and his glorious death on the scaffold for the faith he had embraced].31 Pasquier thereby emphasizes the devotional aspect of the tragedy. The actor’s conversion, persecution, and martyrdom cast the play in an apologetic light, in keeping with standard martyrological discourse. In [ 69 ]

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a more nuanced analysis, Emmanuelle Hénin and François Bonfils, see the play’s apologetic force primarily in dramatic terms and assert that Le Véritable Saint Genest “fait la synthèse de tous les arguments pour une apologie du théâtre” [synthesizes all the arguments for an apology for the theater], including the political utility of the stage, its ability to rival the artistic achievements of the ancients, its degree of perfection with respect to other genres, and, finally, the possibility of theater as a tool for salvation.32 Genesius and Apologetic Theater

The term apology had been used by the early defenders of Christianity to describe a response to pagan accusations of treason, sorcery, and moral depravity, but it soon came to signify any defensive discourse intended to disprove an opponent’s accusations. This was especially true of seventeenth-century France, a period characterized by a renewal of apologetic literature.33 Antoine Furetière, in his Dictionnaire universel (1690), highlights the literary usage of the word “apologie:” APOLOGIE. . . . Livre ou discours fait pour justifier quelqu’un. Il se dit plus particulièrement en matière de littérature, de la deffense qu’on fait des fautes dont on accuse un Auteur. L’Apologie de Balzac est une piece des plus éloquentes qui soit en François. On disoit bien du mal de vous en un tel endroit, mais j’ay bien fait vostre apologie. Ce mot vient du Grec apologeomai, qui signifie, je repousse par paroles, je refute. APOLOGETIQUE. . . . Discours qui contient une deffense, une apologie. L’Apologetique de Tertullien. 34 [APOLOGY. . . . Book or speech made to justify someone. In literary matters particularly, it is said of the defence of an author’s faults. Balzac’s Apologie is one of the most eloquent articles in French. They were speaking ill of you in such a place, but I made your apology. This word comes from the Greek apologeomai, which means, I push away with words, I refute. APOLOGETIC. . . . Speech that contains a defence, an apology. The Apologeticum of Tertullian.]

Furetière cites one of the century’s preeminent men of letters and one of the most influential, and controversial, early church fathers to exemplify a defensive polemic that applies as much to secular as to religious discourse. To call a play apologetic, [ 70 ]

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then, is to assume either its role within literary debate, its religious orientation, or both. The Genest plays are doubly apologetic, as they defend the theater and suggest for it a religious vocation. For playwrights, actors, and spectators, criticism came primarily from religious spheres. The Western “anti-theatrical prejudice” (Barish) which took root in Plato’s dialogues and, by way of Augustine’s Christian interpretation, characterized the dominant ecclesiastical view of theater, lasted well into the seventeenth century. Although the most well-known antitheatrical tracts date from later in the century—Nicole’s Traité de la comédie (1667), Conti’s Traité de la comédie et des spectacles (1669), and Bossuet’s Maximes et réflexions sur la comédie (1694), for example—the first half of the seventeenth century saw its share of antitheatrical sentiment, despite Louis XIII’s 1641 edict that exonerated actors from the charge of infamy and Richelieu’s enthusiastic patronage of up and coming dramatists.35 In the late sixteenth century, Nicolas Rolland du Plessis wrote in his Remonstrances to the king that the toleration of theater would inevitably bring God’s wrath upon the kingdom. Many of these earliest antitheatrical treatises were composed by Protestants. In 1639 the Protestant pastor André Rivet published his Instruction chrestienne touchant les spectacles, condemning actors and patrons alike, and in 1647 the Rochelais minister Philippe Vincent published his Traité des théâtres. Even the Jesuits, who believed enough in the instructional worth of drama to incorporate it into the their educational program and whose pupils carried out annual performances of Latin dramas, occasionally fought against the establishment of professional theaters. The Père Cellot, himself an author of neo-Latin scholastic tragedies, virulently condemned professional theater in his Orationes of 1631, which were republished in 1641.36 Finally, diocesan rites regularly excluded actors from full participation in the sacraments.37 An apology, then, would emphasize theater’s conformity with religious sentiment and there could be no better demonstration of that conformity than a religious tragedy. Henry Phillips suggests that many playwrights “believed that the performance of religious drama could contribute to the justification of actors and drama in general.”38 Pierre Du Ryer (1607–1658) called his Biblical tragedy Saül (1642) a “divertissement sans scandale” [entertainment without scandal]39 and as early as 1629, Balthasar Baro (1596–1650) justified incorporating a Biblical tragedy, Holoferne, within his five-act prose play Célinde by noting its suitability for a virtuous woman: je devais plutôt tirer ce sujet de la Sainte Ecriture que de nulle autre part, pour ce qu’il est croyable qu’un père de Famille, & un home d’éminente [ 71 ]

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probité tel que j’ai dépeint Amintor en tout cet Ouvrage, n’eût pas facilement permis que sa Fille, nourrie dans une vertu irréprochable, eût représenté sur un Théâtre quelques profanes amours, dont l’exemple lui eut peut-être laissé de mauvaises impressions en l’âme. 40 [I was rather obliged to find my subject in Holy Scripture than in any other place, because it is believable that a father and man of outstanding honor, as I have depicted Amintor in this entire work, would not have allowed his daughter, raised with irreprochable virtue, to perform on stage profane love, which example might have left bad impressions on her soul.]

The implied difference between religious and secular tragedy lies in the latter’s portrayal of “profanes amours,” a passion that might leave a negative impression on the soul. Indeed, many antidramatic critics, especially those most influenced by Augustinianism, saw the portrayal of love as one of tragedy’s principal defects. Madame de Sablé (1598–1674), who held a salon at the Place Royale in Paris and was sympathetic to Jansenism, expressed concern that the spectator, “le cœur si rempli de toutes les douceurs de l’amour” [the heart so filled with all the sweetness of love], would exit the theater with false ideas about the innocence and goodness of a passion that she elsewhere declares responsible for humankind’s most ridiculous errors.41 In fact, by the time the marquise’s Maximes were published (1674), theorists considered the love intrigue so essential to tragedy that the relative absence of such intrigue in Racine’s Iphigénie, which appeared that same year, provoked literary debate and moved the Abbé de Villiers to consider to what extent erotic love was indeed necessary for tragedy. He cites martyrological tragedy—Le Martyre de Saint Eustache, Herménégilde—as an example of tragedy in which filial love and charity take the place of erotic love.42 Baro’s statement regarding the inherent morality of religious tragedy appears to be halfhearted. To begin with, Célinde calls for female roles, and it is unlikely Baro would disparage his own art and the actors and actresses who enacted his drama. In other words, female roles are not limited to the interior Biblical play; thus the argument that Biblical drama is the only form suitable for a woman does not hold out against the rest of Baro’s play. Moreover, in mitigating the threat posed by secular tragedy (“l’exemple lui eut peut-être laissé de mauvaises impressions”), Baro suggests that secular tragedy is not so dangerous after all. Finally, as Phillips rightly points out, apologies for religious tragedy like this one could in fact apply to secular works as well; defenders of tragedy routinely argued for its morality. [ 72 ]

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For many of theater’s adversaries, the dangers of theatrical illusion crystallized in the figure of the actor and it is not surprising that he bore the brunt of their criticism. Whereas the fictions woven by playwrights were enough to poison the minds of curious readers, the actor brought those fictions to life, creating a simulacrum or imitation of reality that was far more likely to enchant the spectators by virtue of its immediate, sensual appeal to sight and hearing. The Oratorian Bernard Lamy (1640–1715) noted in 1668 that “les hommes prennent moins de plaisir à considérer les choses que leurs images: que la vraisemblance leur [plaît] plus que la vérité” [men take pleasure less in considering things than images: verisimilitude pleases them more than truth].43 The poet’s crime lay only in composing fiction; the actor was responsible for enacting, incarnating, that fiction. Lamy further held that only the most morally depraved sought to earn their living on stage: “Ce furent de jeunes débauchés à qui le vin avait ôté la honte que la nature a attachée aux actions malhonnêtes, qui osent paraître les premiers sur des Théâtres” [It was these debauched youths, whose drinking relieved them of the shame that nature attaches to inappropriate acts, who dared first appear in the theaters].44 The theater, then, was doubly corrupt: first, as the site of a diabolical perversion of the truth and second, as the gathering place of men and women whose lives were given over to sin. Since actors were considered morally dissolute, they were natural agents of mendaciousness. As Henry Phillips writes, “the actor . . . embodies, in the most literal sense of the word, the corruption of drama; he is the tangible and visible instrument of corruption.”45 In fact, much of the criticism of theater itself, asserts Phillips, was an extension of the charges brought against actors. Even those who generally supported theater could be quick to condemn the actor, whose improvisations and interpretations distort the text. In Le Véritable saint Genest, for example, the newly-converted hero calls his profession “un art peu glorieux” [a little glorious art] (l.1341). François Targa, publisher of the abbé D’Aubignac’s prose tragedy La Pucelle d’Orléans (1642), tells his reader that the printed edition preserves the purity of the original text, corrupted during its performance by actors who, “n’ayant aucune connaissance des bonnes Lettres” [having no knowledge of literature], change the words, conflate sentences, or add improvisations.46 D’Aubignac himself writes of bad actors that, “la représentation . . . souffre beaucoup de défauts, parce que les Comédiens sont souvent assez négligés, pour ne pas exécuter exactement ce que le Poète leur ordonne, & que chacun d’eux, ne s’attachent qu’à son rôle, ne croit pas qu’il soit nécessaire de faire toutes ces observations, dont il ne voit pas le rapport avec le reste de la pièce” [the performance . . . suffers many defects, because the actors are often so negligent that [ 73 ]

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they do not exactly carry out what the poet commands, and each one, concerned only with his role, does not think it necessary to make all these observations, not seeing the connection with the rest of the play].47 D’Aubignac contrasts the actor’s “role” with the instructions he is given by the poet; in other words, the text places limits on the actor’s performance. A good actor, then, must respect the text and the conventions governing declamation; an actor who abandons himself to his role would be considered a bad actor. With so much hostility reserved for the actor, it is not surprising that many apologies for theater responded directly to accusations of the actor’s moral deviance and lack of instruction. In Georges Scudéry’s Comédie des comédiens (1634), a play-within-a-play that dramatizes a theater company’s preparations for and performance of their comedy, Monsieur Blandimare extols the actor’s many qualities, both innate and learned: il faut premièrement, que la nature y contribue, en lui donnant la bonne mine; car c’est ce qui fait la première impression dans l’âme des spectateurs : qu’il ait le port du corps avantageux, l’action libre, & sans contrainte; la voix claire, nette, & forte; que son langage soit exempt des mauvaises prononciations, & des accents corrompus, qu’on acquiert dans les Provinces, & qu’il se conserve toujours la pureté du Français; qu’il ait l’esprit & le jugement bon pour l’intelligence des vers, & la force de la mémoire, pour les apprendre promptement, & les retenir après toujours. . . . & pour conclusion, il faut que les pleurs, le rire, l’amour, la haine, l’indifférence, le mépris, la jalousie, la colère, l’ambition, & bref que toutes les passions soient peintes sur son visage, chaque fois qu’il voudra. [It is important that nature contribute by giving him a good appearance, because this is what first impresses the spectators: that he have an advantageous body, unrestrained and free movement; a clear, precise, and strong voice; that his language be free from bad pronunciation and the corrupt accents one acquires in the provinces, and that it always preserve the purity of French; that he have the mind and good judgment to understand the lines, and a strong memory in order to learn them quickly and remember them forever. . . . And, in conclusion, it is important that tears, laughter, love, hate, indifference, scorn, jealousy, anger, ambition, in short, that all the passions be painted on his face, whenever he wants.]48 [ 74 ]

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Far from being a morally dissolute and uneducated character from the lowest ranks of society, Blandimare’s actor is physically graceful and mentally competent, honing his natural talents with intelligence and judiciousness. There is an implicit distinction between such an actor and the ambulant troupes of the provinces; the professional actor speaks with the “purity” of Parisian French.49 Furthermore, he does not just mechanically parrot his lines, as the Prince de Conti will later claim in his Traité de la comédie et des spectacles (1667). Rather, he is endowed with “l’esprit” and “le jugement.” Rehabilitating the actor to the rank of a true artist required an appeal to the faculty of judgment, the necessary quality in the production of art. It is through this faculty that the actor is able to approach the dramatist himself. Scudéry, by way of Monsieur Blandimare’s panegyric, thus transforms the actor from a mere mimic to an artist in his own right. However, it should be remembered that the actor is always dependent upon the poet and his text. In the Apologie, Scudéry reminds his readers that actors “ne doivent pas oublier, qu’ils sont comme la Statue de Memnon, qu’il fallait que le Soleil regardât pour la faire parler, eux ne pouvant rien dire sans les Poètes” [must not forget that they are like the Statue of Memnon, which needed the sun to shine upon it in order to speak, since they can say nothing without poets].50 Finally, the actor is capable of “painting” various passions on his face, suggesting that he is able to distance himself from the passion he enacts. As Dioclétian exclaims in L’Illustre comédien, “Que l’accord de leurs voix, et des leurs actions, / Exprime adroitement toutes leurs passions. . . . Et que leur industrie a de grâce et d’appas / A dépeindre un tourment qu’ils ne ressentent pas” [How the synchronization of their voices and their actions, / Expresses adroitly all of their passions. . . . And how their activity has grace and charm / To depict a torment that they do not themselves feel].51 Yet evidence of the actor’s physical grace and mental competence would not have been particularly convincing to ecclesiastical critics. The actor’s well-trained body and mind do nothing to rehabilitate him on moral grounds; on the contrary, such skills render him all the more capable and so all the the more dangerous. An exceptional actor’s convincing performance literally abuses the spectator’s judgment. What sets the figure of Genest apart from other apologies is not only that he is a sainted actor, but that his martyrdom is brought about through acting. It is not Genest’s scrupulous observation of the rules of acting that earns him the crown of martyrdom (and thus bestows on him his apologetic force), but in fact his departure from the script. In a sense, then, Genest is simply a bad actor. But if Genest’s acting is freed from the limitations imposed by the text, at the same time it highlights the spectacular, rather than the discursive, nature of theater at [ 75 ]

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a time when theorists such as D’Aubignac and La Mesnardière insisted upon the textuality of the “dramatic poem” [poème dramatique].52 Both Rotrou and Desfontaines exploit Genesius’s reputation as an exceptionally skilled actor to apologetic ends in much the same fashion as Scudéry in La Comédie des comédiens and this makes his departure from the script all the more surprising. The dramatization of Genest’s legendary talent allows the playwright to laud the skills demanded of an actor of Genest’s caliber and, by extension, of actors in general. Here, it is not only Genest’s skill as an actor that is brought to the fore; both dramatists emphasize the results of such skill, the effects the actor produces in his audience. Desfontaines’s tragedy, aptly titled L’Illustre comédien, casts Genest as an extremely capable actor who, by modulating his voice and gestures, masters the emotions of his audience: Tu sais combien Genest, cet Illustre Comique, A de grâce et d’adresse en tout ce qu’il pratique, Et qu’au gré de sa voix, et de ses actions, Il peut comme il lui plaît changer nos passions, Egayer nos esprits, les rendre solitaires, Amoureux, méprisants, pitoyables, colères.53 [You know how much Genest, that illustrious actor, Displays grace and composure in all that he does, How he can, through his voice and actions, Change as he pleases our passions, Cheer our spirits, or make them forlorn, Loving, disdainful, pitiful, angry.]

The long list of qualities enumerated in Scudéry’s Comédie des comédiens is here reduced to “grâce” and “adresse.” Instead, Desfontaines focuses on the relationship between actor and spectator: the actor gains mastery of the “passions” of his audience. In a sense, the spectators’ emotional states are at the mercy of the actor’s whims, reinforced by rhyming “actions” with “passions.” Again, in order to exert such an influence over his audience, the actor must be more than naturally gifted; he must be disciplined. In L’Illustre comédien, the emperor’s counselor Aquillin explains the actor’s qualities in terms that seem to echo M. Blandimare’s description: Le théâtre est sévère, et veut des qualités, Qui puissent faire aux grands admirer ses beautés: Le charme de la voix est sa moindre partie, [ 76 ]

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Si de l’intelligence elle n’est assortie, Et le geste pour elle est un faible secours, Si ce rayon divin ne règle ses discours Outre le jugement, l’adresse, et la mémoire L’assurance est aussi nécessaire à sa gloire, Et la propreté même en son habillement, N’est point pour un acteur un petit ornement.54 Theater is strict and demands the qualities That can make the great admire its beauties. A charming voice is hardly enough, If it isn’t guided by intelligence, And gestures cannot compensate Unless that divine ray controls discourse In addition to judgment, composure, and memory Confidence is necessary for the actor’s glory And the cleanliness of his dress, Is no small thing for an actor.]

Aquillin’s description proceeds from the assumption that theater must please a noble spectator (“des grands”). He implicitly establishes an ambiguous relationship between the actor and the royal spectator; the actor is the sovereign’s subject, but the sovereign is subject to the actor’s power over his emotional state. Earlier, Genest’s power was attributed to his voice and gestures (“voix” and “actions”). Here, Aquillin makes it clear that these attributes are controlled by reason. Like Scudéry’s Blandimare, who emphasizes the actor’s intellectual capabilities that are necessary to his art, Aquillin explains that a charming voice and supple body are not enough if they are not regulated by “intelligence,” “ce rayon divin.” Just as Desfontaines’s Genest is able to control the emotions of his audience, so too does Rotrou’s hero gain an “empire absolu” [absolute empire] over the souls of his spectators.55 Coming from Dioclétian, ruler of Rome, this compliment seems to place the actor’s power on a par with that of the emperor: both rule absolutely, one in the political sphere, the other in the metaphysical one. Additionally, by placing his encomium to the actor in the mouth of the emperor, Rotrou confers a greater legitimacy to theater than Desfontaines, whose Dioclétian stands to be convinced of theater’s political utility and the actor’s merits. Rotrou’s Dioclétian, on the other hand, is well aware of both the usefulness of theater, as a royal “divertissement” [entertainment] (l. 207), and the actor’s essential role in the [ 77 ]

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rehabilitation of theater. In fact, Dioclétian begins his monologue praising theater by recognizing the actor’s skill: Le théâtre aujourd’hui, fameux par ton mérite ... Et dans l’état qu’il est ne peut, sans être ingrat, Nier de [te] devoir son plus brillant éclat.56 [Your merit has made the theater famous ... And in its current state cannot, without ingratitude, Deny that it owes you its luster.]

Without the actor, there can be no theater. In Aristotelian terms, tragedy is the “representation of an action” and it is through pronunciation or delivery (actio) that the text is brought to life. Indeed, the “acteur” as a participant in the “action” of the tragedy, was an entirely different entity from the “comédien,” or the person whose profession was acting and whose body and voice served as a support for the “acteur.” In other words, in the seventeenth century, there was no clear distinction between “acteur” and “personnage.” On the other hand, as Bénédicte LouvatMolozay notes, a critical distance separated the actor (or “comédien”) from his role (or, the “acteur”).57 That a play’s success depended upon the rhetorical skill of the actor was a reality in Rotrou’s day: Tallemant de Réaux and René Rapin attributed the tremendous success of Tristan l’Hermite’s Mariamne to the celebrated actor Mondory’s performance as Hérode—a performance that was, like Genest’s ultimately fatal. After praising the actor’s skill, Dioclétian showers Genest with a “gloire” “légitime:” Avec confusion j’ai vu cent fois tes feintes Me livrer malgré moi de sensibles atteintes; En cent sujets divers, suivant tes mouvements; J’ai reçu de tes feux de vrais ressentiments; Et l’empire absolu que tu prends sur une âme M’a fait cent fois de glace et cent autres de flamme.58 [With confusion I’ve witnessed your tricks a hundred times Transport me despite myself; To a hundred different states, following your movements; I’ve felt real emotion thanks to your passions; [ 78 ]

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And the absolute empire you hold over my soul Has made me shiver and burn a hundred times each.]

Praising the actor in much the same way as Rutile in L’Illustre comédien, Dioclétian here marvels at the power of theatrical illusion over his emotions. Interestingly, this characterization of theatrical illusion could just as easily be found in the work of anti-theatrical moralists: “avec confusion,” “malgré moi,” “l’empire absolu,” all suggest the power of theatrical illusion to unhinge the spectator’s grasp on reality and carry him or her into a world of fiction. Lamy, in his Nouvelles Réflexions sur l’Art Poétique (1668), acknowledges that theater “nous enchante de telle manière, que nous ne sentant plus nous-mêmes; nous entrons avec plaisir dans toutes les passions qu’ils [dramatists, and consequently, actors] veulent exciter dans notre âme” [enchants us in such a way that, no longer feeling ourselves, we take on all the emotions that they want to excite in our souls].59 Rotrou’s Dioclétian could not agree more. The moralist and the emperor differ, however, with respect to their understanding of the ethical implications of theatrical illusion. Tragedy, for Rotrou’s royal spectators, is useful insofar as it offers examples according to which the members of the audience can reform their character: [La tragédie] l’emporte enfin par les illustres marques D’exemple des héros, d’ornement des monarques, De règles et de mesure à leurs affections, Par ses événements et par ses actions60 [At last, [tragedy] wins out with its illustrious marks Of the example of heroes, of the ornament of monarchs, Of rules and of measure to their affections, By its events and its actions]

Tragedy is the best dramatic genre (“elle l’emporte”) because its subjects are noble and elevated and because it presents examples of good conduct to emulate. On the other hand, comedy provides “contre la tristesse un si présent remède” [such an immediate remedy against sadness] (l. 246); especially useful for the sovereign, who needs occasional relief from his many responsibilities.61 Theater as a means to glorify, edify, and entertain the prince was an early modern commonplace. For an antitheatrical critic such as Lamy, however, the “vrais ressentiments” [real feelings] excited by theatrical illusion are “dangereux à l’homme . . . , qu’il n’y prenne l’habitude de quitter les choses réelles pour suivre leur ombre” [dangeours to man . . . , lest he get in the habit of abandoning real things to follow their shadow].62 [ 79 ]

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For Lamy, Dioclétian’s “malgré moi” would be dangerous insofar as it reveals a loss of the spectator’s self-control. The good actor, like the orator, always remained in control of his actions. The conventions governing his voice and gestures were so codified, that he could never fully abandon himself to his role. At the same time, however, contemporary discussions of acting like Scudéry’s display a tension between the desire to express the actor’s conformity with rhetorical conventions (“imiter”) and a kind of abandonment (“devenir”). If the actor, for Scudéry, was to remember his dependence upon the text and his knowledge of the conventions of actio, thereby maintaining a critical distance between himself and the character he portrays, the “Examples que doivent suivre & imiter nos Comédiens” [Examples that actors should follow and imitate] suggest an altogether different sort of actor: Aesope de qui j’ai déjà parlé, jouant un jour le rôle d’Atrée, en fureur contre son frère, tua d’un coup de Sceptre un de ses valets, qui passa fortuitement devant lui, pour traverser le Théâtre, tant il était hors de soi-même, & tant il avait épousé la passion, de ce Roy qu’il représentait.63 [Aesopus, whom I already mentioned, playing the role of Atreus angry at his brother, struck and killed with a scepter one of his valets who happened to pass before on the stage, for he was so outside of himself and had so embraced the emotion of the king he was playing.]

Here, Scudéry does not describe the ideal actor we saw earlier, who maintains his sang-froid and simply “paints” various passions on his face without actually feeling them, but another kind of actor who does indeed abandon himself to his role (being “hors de soi-même,” the actor Aesopus is in fact elsewhere; the space he occupied on stage filled by Atreus) and who embraces the passions he is to portray. The distance between “comédien” and “personnage” is thus minimized to the point of blurring the lines between fiction and reality. Scudéry’s example, then, read against his more theoretical admonitions, reveals a tension between theory and practice, between the ideal of “imiter” and the real possibility of “devenir.” It is precisely this tension that is at the heart of Genest’s conversion, when he appears overtaken by his role. For the Roman audiences described by both Rotrou and Desfontaines, Genest embodies the perfect actor: having mastered his innate talent, he has made himself master of the spectator’s psychological state, and his exceptional acting has brought glory and renown to the theater. Yet if Genest the actor is supposed to represent an apology for theater, the apologetic force seems to be undermined by his [ 80 ]

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final, fatal performance. The actor, as we have seen, willingly controlled his gestures and voice in order to trick the spectator. The actor was supposed to mimic the passions of his character, without actually feeling them himself. Curiously, however, the apologies for acting added to the martyrology by both Rotrou and Desfontaines become increasingly irrelevant as Genest performs. When Genest feels as though he is becoming his role, he is no longer in control and consequently fails to maintain the affective distance between himself and his character. Rotrou’s Genest is thus blamed for his “ardeur insensée” [insane fervor] and “désordre” [disorder]64 and Desfontaines’ hero has gone mad: “Il a perdu le sens, et son âme troublée, / Rend comme son esprit sa langue déréglée” [He has lost his mind, and his troubled soul / Is to blame for his unruly mind and tongue].65 The actor’s “unruly tongue” indicates his liberation from the constraints of the script, the rules of rhetoric, and even the sovereign’s commandments. No longer in control of his actio, Genest literally abandons himself to his role, the characteristic of a “bad actor.” However, it is by disrupting the action of the embedded play, by freeing himself from the constraints imposed by the text, that the frame play, Genest’s “glorieuse Tragédie” (Chappuzeau), is brought to a close. “D’une feinte en mourant faire une vérité”: Genest’s theatrical conversion

In the second act of Rotrou’s tragedy, Genest suddenly feels overwhelmed by his character’s faith but dismisses the conversion he feels as the result of overzealous rehearsal, reminding himself that the actor’s job is to imitate, not to become, his character: Je feins moins Adrian que je ne le deviens . . . Je sais, pour l’éprouver, que par un long étude L’art de nous transformer nous passe en habitude. Mais il semble qu’ici des vérités sans fard Passent et l’habitude et la force de l’art. . . . Mais . . . Il s’agit d’imiter, et non de devenir.66 [I’m not so much feigning as becoming Adrian . . . I know that after years of study The art of transformation becomes habit. But it seems that now naked truths Surpass both habit and art. . . . But . . . It’s a question of imitation, not becoming.] [ 81 ]

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Genest’s dilemma is articulated in terms of an actor’s profession. Actors were supposed to adopt their characters temporarily, they were to paint a convincing portrait, but they were not supposed to become their character. In order for acting to be brought within the boundaries of actio, the “art de se transformer” that Genest speaks of, like Scudéry’s assertion that actors should “se métamorphoser”67 must be understood only metaphorically; no substantial change in identity was to take place. Hence Genest’s insistence in this passage on the “long[ue] étude” upon which depends the “art” of transformation. According to Tallement de Réaux, the famous actor Mondory died upon exiting the stage after losing himself to his role.68 Sabine Chaouche notes that, “‘l’exemple malheureux’ de Mondory montre que le comédien ne doit jamais s’abandonner à la sensibilité et doit toujours rester maître de son actio” [the unfortunate example of Mondory shows that the actor must never abandon himself to sensitivity and must always remain master of his actio].69 In fact, if an actor were to embrace his role to such an extent that he became the character, he would incarnate the worst fears of antitheatrical critics: namely that an individual, confronted with the inherently pleasing simulacrum of reality, would abandon the real world for a world of illusions. As we saw earlier, this fear led antitheatrical critics to denounce the detrimental effects of performance on the individual. Here, the actor drives the point home. For the danger of acting lies not in masking the truth, but in replacing the truth with fiction. If the distance—and distinction—between simulation and sincerity or between fiction and fact could be maintained, then fiction might not be so troublesome. For Ramie Targoff, the “danger of hypocrisy comes to rest not in its opposition to the sincere, but in its potential evolution into sincerity itself.”70 One can always unmask a hypocrite to reveal true character but if the mask becomes the hypocrite’s face, then there is no longer a chance to uncover the truth. Molière’s Monsieur Jourdain, whose fantasy eventually supplants reality, cuts a far more troubling figure than Tartuffe. For many critics of the stage, the persuasiveness of fiction only reinforced humankind’s propensity to prefer simulacra to the real thing. As Lamy notes, Une des raisons pour lesquelles on défend aux Chrétiens de se trouver aux Spectacles, est, selon saint Augustin, qu’ils ne sont que des images de la vérité, & qu’il est dangereux a l’homme susceptible d’erreur, comme il est, qu’il n’y prenne l’habitude de quitter les choses réelles pour suivre leur ombre.71 [One of the reasons why we forbid Christians to attend spectacles is, according to Augustine, that they are nothing but images of truth, and [ 82 ]

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that it is dangerous to man, as susceptible to error as he is, that he make a habit of abandoning real things to follow their shadows.]

He later notes that “il faut imiter ce que l’on voit sur le Théâtre, ou en avoir de l’aversion” [we must imitate what we see on the stage, or be repulsed by it].72 In other words, there is no middle ground between embracing the fictitious images produced on stage and preserving the integrity of one’s being. Consequently, one can either attend the theater (and have no choice but to lose oneself to a world of illusion) or one can refrain from it (and in so doing preserve oneself ). According to Lamy’s logic, Genest could not help but become one with his role and break with the conventions governing acting. At this point, it seems fair to say that Genest was executed as much for being a bad actor as for having embraced Christianity. Plancien notes that Genest, “[d]es plus fameux héros fameux imitateur” [famous mimic of the most famous heroes] was in fact a “si mauvais acteur dedans sa propre histoire” [such a bad actor in his own story].73 Genest’s crime, then, was not necessarily a veritable conversion but rather derogation of the tacit understanding of the relationship between the spectators and the actors. Because, as Chapelain writes, “l’œil est le juge,” the spectators have no way to determine if what they are seeing is truth or the appearance of truth. The Roman spectators in Rotrou’s tragedy do not at first perceive Genest’s conversion as authentic: Dioclétian. Voyez avec quel art Genest sait aujourd’hui Passer de la figure aux sentiments d’autrui. Valérie. Pour tromper l’auditeur, abuser l’acteur même De son métier, sans doute, est l’adresse suprême.74 [Diocletian. See with what art Genest can today Go from the appearance to the feelings of another. Valerie. Deceiving himself to trick the spectator Is no doubt the highest skill of his profession.]

For Dioclétian and his daughter, if Genest seemed to embrace authentic Christian belief, it was “avec art”; in other words, they did not recognize Genest’s conversion as authentic. In fact, for the other actors as well as for the royal audience, Genest has actually fallen from grace. When Genest exits the stage (5.5), his fellow actor Lentule remarks that the once illustrious actor must have forgotten his lines.75 A similar scene takes place in Desfontaines’s tragedy when, after Genest’s baptism, [ 83 ]

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expressed in terms that recall the loss of identity evoked by Rotrou’s hero (“Où suis-je? Qu’ai-je vu / . . . Je crois, je suis Chrétien”), the confusion of Genest’s fellow actors is seen as part of the play: Rutile. Il leur va débiter quelque étrange imposture Aquilin. Qu’il feint bien! Dioclétian. Il est vrai qu’on ne peut feindre mieux, Et qu’il charme l’oreille aussi bien que les yeux.76 [Rutile. He’s going to recite some strange lie. Aquilin. How well he acts! Diocletian. It’s true that one cannot act any better, And he charms the ear as well as the eyes.]

According to the royal spectators, then, Genest’s conversion is an “étrange imposture” [strange lie], indeed, it is his best performance ever.77 In both plays, Genest’s conversion is initially understood in purely theatrical terms. It is not until the emperor demands that the play come to an end, having grown concerned with Genest’s exceptionally eloquent profession of faith, that the spectators realize that the actor has departed from the text and is acting independently. In Rotrou’s tragedy, Dioclétian confronts Genest, who disrupts the embedded play once and for all by claiming that illusion has given way to truth: Diocletian. Ta feinte passe enfin pour importunité. Genest. Elle vous doit passer pour une vérité.78 [Diocletian. Now your performance is looking like importunity. Genest. It should look like truth.]

Similarly, in Desfontaines’s tragedy, Dioclétian declares that Genest’s acting has begun to displease him, and demands that the performance come to a halt: Diocletian. Cette feinte, Aquillin commence à me déplaire, Qu’on cesse. Genest. Il n’est pas temps, ô César, de me taire79 [Diocletian. Aquilin, this play is beginning to displease me. End it. Genest. Now is to the time, O Caesar, to silence me.] [ 84 ]

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In L’Illustre comédien, the rupture is even more striking, because there is no indication that the emperor is speaking directly to Genest, yet the actor replies to the emperor, bridging the embedded play and the frame play. While both cases could be seen as a tear in the fabric of theatrical illusion, I suggest that we read Genest’s conversion, his departure from the scripted performance, as excessive theatricality, as an instance of theatrical illusion spreading out from the stage and invading reality. The plays do not end here. Instead, as the distinction between the embedded play and the frame play collapses, the spectators are drawn into the action. They are no longer idle viewers, but participants. Genest’s “feinte” has become a “vérité.” Alternatively, to borrow Kubiak’s terms, an instance where, as in the sacraments, “the seemingly false is realized.” In Rotrou’s tragedy, the actor may insists in vain that the performance has ceased, for he continues to describe his actions in theatrical terms: Ce n’est plus Adrian, c’est Genest qui s’exprime; Ce jeu n’est plus un jeu, mais une vérité Où par mon action je suis représenté, Où moi-même l’objet et l’acteur de moi-même. 80 It is no longer Adrian but Genest who speaks; This is no longer a game, but a truth Where by my performance I represent myself, Where I am both role and performer.

It is curious that the “vérité” Genest describes is a place of continued theatricality, where he “represents” himself and where the distance between the actor and his role collapses. Genest continues to perform (“par mon action”) but his model or “objet” is no longer a fictional persona, but himself (“moi-même”). The problem is that the Roman spectators (and we ourselves) cannot recognize this “moi-même.” His conversion is the result of his “unruly tongue” and his transgression of the stage’s physical and representational boundaries (he passes behind the curtain and, after returning to the stage, addresses the emperor directly). In other words, it is the result of a break with the rhetorical conventions of acting. Again, if Genest is a bad actor insofar as he ceases to respect the rhetorical conventions that should, ideally, govern his performance, and insofar as he is acting independently of the expectations of both his fellow actors and his spectators, he nevertheless succeeds in moving his spectators, in controlling, as it were, their passions. In fact, Genest does not so much abandon actio as surpass it: “En cet acte, Genest, à mon gré se surpasse” [In this act, Genest has, in my opinion, outdone himself ] (l.667). Camus’ converted actress Rosoria similarly “se surmonta elle-mesme” [overcame [ 85 ]

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herself ] at the moment of her conversion while playing the role of Saint Cecilia.81 Sabine Chaouche aptly notes that this theatricality was problematic in the seventeenth century: “C’est justement la notion de ‘théâtralité’ (comprise comme ce qui est ‘spectaculaire’ ou ‘outré’) qui a posé problème au XVIIe siècle parce qu’elle était niée dans l’art oratoire” [It is exactly the notion of “theatricality” (understood as that which is “spectacular” or “excessive”) that posed a problem in the seventeenth century because it was denied in the art of oratory].82 Genest, “si mauvais acteur dedans sa propre histoire,” then, may be read as an apologetic figure for the theater as a kind of total work of art, rather than acting as the deployment of rhetorical figures. The excess of theatricality not only collapses the distance between the actor and his role, but also between the spectacle and the spectators. Genest’s sanctity only reinforces this dynamic, for sanctity is by its nature excessive. “[T]he bodies of saints” belong “to an embodiment that, strictly speaking, exceeds them.”83 The proliferation of relics is a concrete example of such excess: a finger bone here, a lock of hair there. In the Genest plays, the martyred actor exceeds himself: he is at once an actor and his role (since it is nearly impossible to disentangle the two), he enacts a drama that is at once local and universal, historical, and eschatological. As a consequence of this excess, the erstwhile spectators, too, incarnate their respective roles. Spreading beyond the confines of the stage, the excess of theatricality transforms the spectators into participants, in a movement that announces Antonin Artaud’s vision of a total spectacle that abolishes the distance between performer and spectator. From the moment that Genest apostrophizes Dioclétian, the emperor is transformed from spectator to participant. In Rotrou’s tragedy, this is underscored by the stage direction according to which the emperor, having had enough of Genest’s blasphemous performance, stands up. This direction suggests that, previously, the emperor had been seated. In standing up, Dioclétian assumes his role as emperor. Seated, he was a spectator, standing, he seeks to reaffirm his authority over the disorder that Genest has brought to the performance.84 Yet in so doing, the emperor the role of persecutor that Genest’s fellow actor Octave played in the embedded play. At the beginning of the tragedy, Genest tells his royal audience that the play they are about to witness is based on an actual martyrdom, and asks permission to portray the emperor Maximin, responsible for the execution, who is present in the audience: Si votre nom, Seigneur, nous est libre en la scène; Et la mort d’Adrian, l’un de ces obstinés Par vos derniers arrêts naguère condamnés, [ 86 ]

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Vous sera figurée avec un art extrême, Et si peu différent de la vérité même ... Où César à César sera représenté.85 [If we are allowed to use your name, My Lord; The death of Adrian, one of those obstinate criminals Condemned not long ago by your recent decrees, Will be performed for you with such art, And so very like the truth itself ... Where Caesar will be represented to Caesar.]

Here, the dynamic whereby “imiter” becomes “devenir” is again at play. The tragedy’s specularity whereby “César à César sera représenté” posits a distance between the “real” César and his theatrical likeness. The distance that allows him to recognize himself in the drama unfolding before his eyes, as in a mirror, is mimetic. Yet this distance collapses and Maximin’s response to Genest—“crois qu’avec plaisir je serai spectateur / En la même action dont je serai l’acteur” [believe that I’ll gladly be the spectator / Of the same performance where I’ll be the actor]—is brought full circle when Genest’s performance spreads from the stage to the audience. The emperor does not simply recognize himself in the performance, but now embodies, in the frame play, the role that had been merely represented in the embedded play. What was imitation is now incarnation.86 At the moment Genest confronts the emperor, the distance between the embedded play and the frame play collapses. It does not signal the end of the embedded play, but rather the merging of the two plays. The emperor’s transformation from spectator to participant, and the actor’s arrest, imprisonment and martyrdom bring the tragedy to its close. Rotrou’s liberal use of theatrical metaphors only underscores the theatricality of Genest’s final performance, for example: Le Geôlier. Vous vous acquittez mal de votre personnage, Et je crains en cet acte un tragique succès87 [The Jailer. You’re doing a bad job of playing your role, And I fear a tragic end to this act.] Maximin. Donner ce soir au peuple un spectacle sanglant, Si déjà sur le bois d’un théâtre funeste Il n’a représenté l’action qui lui reste.88 [ 87 ]

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[Maximin. Give this evening a bloody spectacle to the people, If he hasn’t already, on the planks of a frightening stage Carried out what remains of his performance.] Plancien. . . . ce glorieux acteur, ... A du courroux des dieux contre sa perfidie Par un acte sanglant fermé la tragédie.89 [Plancien. . . . this glorious actor, ... Angering the gods by his betrayal, Has with a bloody act closed the tragedy.]

The jailer, Maximin and Plancien all blur the boundaries between theater (here, the interior play) and reality (the frame play). Despite the interruption occasioned by Genest’s conversion, he will bring the martyr-play to its “tragique succès” by an “acte sanglant”—his martyrdom. Desfontaines, while not as liberal as Rotrou in exploiting theatrical metaphors, does indeed describe Genest’s martyrdom as a spectacle. Rutile describes it as “un spectacle où j’ai peine à bien croire mes yeux” [a spectacle where I can hardly believe my eyes ] (l.1437), and notes that the people who had assembled to watch the execution were filled with “pitié” [pity], “horreur” [horror], or “crainte” [fear]. But if Desfontaines is less inclined to theatricalize Genest’s martyrdom, he does emphasize the relationship of the throne to the theater. Although his counselor reminds Dioclétian that he is untouchable seated upon the throne, he also mentions that the emperor is exposed to the whole world: “Tous le monde sur vous ayant les yeux ouverts.”90 The same image is exploited in Charles Regnault’s martyrological tragedy Marie Stuard (1642): “Les Rois qu’un monde entier de subjets idolatre, / Sont regardez du thrône ainsi que d’un Théâtre” [Kings, who are worshiped by a whole world of subjects, / Are viewed on the throne as though on a stage].91 The spectacle of martyrdom is certainly not a new trope, nor is the spectacle of royalty. What both Rotrou’s Le Véritable saint Genest and Desfontaines’ L’Illustre comédien, ou le martyre de saint Genest problematize is the relationship theater and theology. Genest’s force as an apologetic figure does not derive from his exceptional rhetorical skill nor his rigorous observation of the dramatic text, but rather from the barely perceptible passage from “imiter” to “devenir.” Moreover, [ 88 ]

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Genest’s conversion does not so much represent a disruption of theatrical illusion as a disruption of reality or, more precisely, the realization (in the “real” world) of what appeared to be false (on stage). Theater’s capacity to serve as a vehicle for salvation thus depends, like the sacraments, on its power to effect change in the “real” world, to alter reality.

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I E R R E C O R N E I L L E ’ S Polyeucte, martyr, “tragédie chrétienne” was created by the actors of the Théâtre du Marais during the 1642–1643 season and first published in 1643. It remains not only one of Corneille’s most well known and widely read tragedies, but also the foremost representative of early modern hagiographical theater in France.1 At first glance, however, the subject offers little in the way of a compelling story and was far from popular. As Corneille wrote in the Abrégé du martyre de saint Polyeucte that preceded the printed play, it was largely thanks to the theater—and his tragedy in particular—that the public knew anything about Saint Polyeuctus, a relatively obscure third-century martyr.2 Unlike the Lives of a Eustachius or a Catherine, the Life of Polyeuctus lacks outrageous instruments of torture. Unlike Genesius’s spectacular on-stage conversion, Polyeuctus’s ordinary baptism lacks the rich metatheatrical potential of the actor-cum-saint. And unlike the popular Burgundian saint Regina who was the object of a vibrant cult featuring processions and even a play, Polyeuctus’s cult was never popular, even regionally. The martyrdom of Polyeuctus is a straightforward, typical, perhaps even boring, account of martyrdom. To what, then, might we attribute the tragedy’s enormous success? Perhaps it is the play’s rigorous conformity with the prevailing classical unities of the period: in Polyeucte, Corneille observed the unities of time, place, and plot, and (curiously) kept at bay the kinds of miraculous phenomena that other dramatists did not hesitate to incorporate into their religious plays. The play’s normativity certainly contributed to its enduring place in French theater history as the best, if not the sole, representative of Christian tragedy. J. S. Street, for example, states that “Corneille was the first to solve . . . the problem of conveying the [ 90 ]

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religious significance of sacred material in the Classical form.”3 Kosta Loukovitch, in L’Evolution de la tragédie religieuse classique, holds that Corneille “aura presque à créer de toutes pièces la vraie tragédie chrétienne” [would nearly have to create from whole cloth true Christian tragedy], drawing, like a demiurge, form and substance from the “chaos antérieur” [earlier chaos] of irregular religious plays.4 If the subject itself offers little in the way of a compelling story, the rigorous application of dramatic rules is unlikely to boost its interest. Perhaps, then, it is the erotic complication Corneille brought to the plot. In fact, in the seventeenth century, many readers and spectators considered the introduction of Sévère, Pauline’s first lover whom Corneille invented for dramatic purposes, as a redemptive gesture that saved the play from certain failure.5 Saint-Evremond, for example, wrote that the touching scenes between Sévère and Pauline preserved the author’s reputation “que les vertus chrétiennes de nos martyrs lui eussent fait perdre” [that he would have lost with the martyrs’ Christian virtues].6 The introduction of an erotic component is a significant departure from the source text, but in this chapter I would like to turn our attention toward another of Corneille’s inventions, namely, the sequence of sudden conversions that closes the tragedy and serves as a dramatic substitute for Polyeucte’s martyrdom, which Corneille neither shows—bienséance oblige—nor recounts.7 On this account I agree with Street that Corneille’s solution to the challenge of representing the sacred on stage is novel, but I am not convinced that a strict adherence to the conventions of neoclassical poetics is where the solution lies or what makes the solution remarkable. As I will show in this chapter, Corneille draws on an alternative to neoclassical dramatic conventions, namely, a theory of representation linked to the doctrine of the Incarnation and its sacramental derivative, the Eucharist. One would expect the martyrdom of the eponymous character and hero to occupy pride of place in the play’s final moments, but Polyeucte’s martyrdom is remarkable in its absence. Indeed, of all the methods of evangelization mentioned in early Christian narrative, martyrdom is without a doubt the most spectacular. A martyr’s extraordinary fortitude in the midst of unspeakable torment rarely failed to impress the spectators, ideally bringing about their sudden conversion. Martyrdom thus seems to lend itself to dramatic treatment. Polyeucte’s martyrdom, however, lacks a martyr, or at least its representation, visual or otherwise. The absence of martyrdom is striking. Even more striking is what occurs next: Pauline suddenly reappears in the penultimate scene, splattered with her husband’s blood (“Son sang, dont tes bourreaux viennent de me couvrir” [His blood, which your executioners have just covered me with]), to profess her newfound faith. Her [ 91 ]

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father, Félix, subsequently converts. Pauline’s dramatic reapperance manages to convey the miraculous effects, if not the details, of Polyeucte’s death as a martyr. In the Examen, Corneille writes that he was unable to recount Polyeucte’s martyrdom because he had already recounted that of his companion Néarque in Act IV and that to do so a second time would be a mark of poetic “sterility.”8 Accounts of martyrdom are formulaic: profession of faith, request to recant, refusal, torture, and, finally, execution. Recounting two separate martyrdoms in a single play might consequently tax the spectators’ patience and reveal a dearth of creative inspiration. Yet Corneille provides hardly any details of Néarque’s martyrdom, which comprises a grand total of five lines (ll.994–997); surely this did not exhaust Corneille’s poetic vitality! If, however, we situate Corneille’s concern for a fertile, as opposed to a “sterile,” representation of his principal character’s martyrdom at the juncture of both poetics and theology, then his excuse (i.e., “aurait été une répétition et une marque de stérilité” [would have been a repetition and a mark of sterility]) begins to look more like a serious reflection on drama’s potential to represent the unrepresentable, to circumvent the Aristotelian cordon sanitaire that kept out the sacred, without, however, breaking the rules of neoclassical dramaturgy. Sterility is not only a poetic concern, it is a religious one as well. Martyrdom touches the audience and thereby generates new Christians. As Tertullian wrote in his Apologeticum, the blood of the martyrs is the seed (semen est sanguis) of the Church.9 In this sense, one could argue that the blood of the martyrs is indeed fertile in that it must not be spilled in vain but in order to order to move the spectators. Similarly, good theater must not leave the audience cold and indifferent. If we remember what Chapelain wrote about poetic faith, “affection” was a necessary component of the theater experience.10 The key difference between the emotions stirred up by the spectacle of martyrdom and those elicited by the spectacle of the stage was articulated in Genest’s observation that the essence of theatrical representation ought to lie in imitation (“imiter”), not becoming (“devenir”). In both cases, the effect is inextricably linked to the act of spectatorship, to the spectacle of martyrdom or of the theater. Yet for a tragedy about martyrdom, particularly one that abounds in references to vision or the visual, Polyeucte is remarkably antispectacular. A martyrological tragedy promises to recount in vivid terms, if not show, the extraordinary suffering of the martyr, but Polyeucte does not deliver on this promise. Even the most spectacular scene of the play, Polyeucte’s destruction of pagan idols “aux yeux de tous” [before everyone’s eyes] (l.719), which may be read as an indictment of [ 92 ]

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vision or, as Michael O’Connell has put it, of “the idolatrous eye,” takes place behind the scenes.11 John Lyons has observed, the play “narrates and even celebrates the destruction of the visual.”12 In addition to the outright destruction of the visual, the tragedy constantly calls into question the faith that we place in what we see. The characters, for example, continually misread or are unable to appreciate the significance of visible signs. Pauline misreads Polyeucte’s hasty departure in Act 1; she likewise misreads her dream. Félix misjudges the “example” of Néarque’s death, intended to show Polyeucte the fatal consequences of obstinacy and thereby frighten him into submission—a plan that backfires. Pauline misreads Polyeucte’s tears in prison. Even Pauline’s profession of faith—“Je vois, je sais, je crois” [I see, I know, I believe]—suggests for the audience a frustrated gaze, placing as it does the object of her sight beyond the representational field of the stage. Finally, Sévère fails to see the the “tendre spectacle” [tender spectacle] that concludes the tragedy as miraculous proof of divine agency. The idiom “seeing is believing” in Polyeucte is something of a trap, for trusting too much in our eyes may erroneously limit us to “this side,” the “en-deçà” (Boulnois), as it were, of the image.13 A visual representation (were it possible) or a vivid description of Polyeucte’s martyrdom would thus seem to run the risk of reifying his suffering body as the object of a curious, prurient, or indiscriminating gaze and thereby evacuate its theological significance. Instead of showing Polyeucte’s martyrdom, Corneille makes it known through Pauline’s conversion. This innovative manner of representing, that is, of making present, Polyeucte’s act of self-sacrifice comes tantalizingly close to mirroring the sacramental culture of the Catholic Church, whereby the sacraments not only signify (represent) divine action or grace but also render that action tangibly present. Specifically, Pauline’s sudden conversion as a substitute for the visual representation of Polyeucte’s martyrdom suggests a dramatic counterpart to the doctrine of transubstantiaion, whereby the Eucharstic wafer’s “conversion” makes present an unseen sacrifice. In this way, Polyeucte opens up the possibility of an alternative “representational practice” that owes perhaps more to the sacramental culture of the Catholic Church than it does to Aristotelian poetics. In This is My Body, Michal Kobialka distinguishes between representation as a concept and representation as a practice, noting that the “concept” of representation came into being during the early modern period, when it was defined as the perspectival relationship between the subject and the object.14 Kobialka dramatizes this early modern fixing of representation by way of the figure of an actor: “‘This is my body,’ said an actor on stage, and all the gazes on the other side focused their attention on it.”15 In other words, the gaze fixed on the body of the actor rather than [ 93 ]

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beyond it; the actor’s body thus displayed is immanent, rather than transcendent. Olivier Boulnois similarly argues that the shift toward perspectival representation in plastic arts meant that there was no longer a transcendent “au-delà” [beyond] the image, only an immanent “en-deça” [this side].16 The exception, of course, was to be found in the sacrament of the Eucharist. The Tridentine Church held that Christ was “really and substantially” present in the Eucharist, although the “manner” in which he is present is ineffable: it can “scarcely” be “expressed in words.”17 Considering sacramental dynamics in light of Kobialka’s focus on representational practice rather than theory offers a fresh perspective on the practices available to seventeenth-century playwrights, including Corneille. In particular, Polyeucte suggests the availability of a “fertile” representational practice analogous to the sacrament of the Eucharist. The Théâtre du Marais, where Polyeucte premiered in 1642, was no church and the actors who played the parts of Polyeucte, Pauline, and their companions were no priests. Theater, after all, was nothing but entertainment (D’Aubignac) and actors, entertainers. There is nevertheless an uncanny resemblance between the stage and the altar. Both the stage and the altar attract the gaze of an assembly of spectators, both demarcate a space in which a mundane thing—a piece of bread, say, or a human body—becomes something other than (and in addition to) itself, and both require a certain faith on the part of the spectators to guarantee that transformation.18 With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that the French word “tréteaux” (from the Old French “trestel”), commonly translated as “planks” (i.e. of a stage), also designated an elevated place for the celebration of the Eucharist.19 Christian Biet and Christophe Triau note that the dramatic use of the term tréteaux incorporates the liturgical use of the term: “la scène . . . assure à la fois la representation d’un sacrifice et le passage d’un corps de comédien à l’entité d’un personnage” [the stage . . . guarantees both the representation of a sacrifice and the passing of an actor’s body to the entity of character].20 “Representing a sacrifice” here refers to the violent “scaffold tragedies,” especially popular in the early seventeenth century, that portrayed murder, execution, and in the case of martyr-plays, torture. Alexandre Hardy’s Scédase (1604), which features graphic scenes of rape and murder, is representative of this corpus.21 “Sacrifice” on this reading is coterminous with but not identical to the actor’s quasi-liturgical transformation from body into character. Could there be, however, a more intimate relationship between the actor’s transformation and sacrifice? Could theater itself entail a kind of sacrifice? For Genesius, acting brought about his execution. Genesius’ self-destructive acting calls to mind Antonin Artaud’s twentieth-cen[ 94 ]

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tury appeal for a kind of theater in which actors, “like victims, signal through the flames:” Artaud’s ideal actor resembles a martyr insofar as his or her performance becomes an act of self-sacrifice. Theater and self-sacrifice, then, come to resemble one another. There is unfortunately very little scholarship examining the sacramental or representational nature of the relationship between the Church and the stage in early modern France, so in this chapter I take my cue from scholars of early modern English literature, who have developed a substantial body of scholarship on the ways in sacramental theology influenced post-Reformation English drama. Keeping in mind the confessional differences between early modern England and France, it is instructive to consider how the theater can appropriate Eucharistic tropes of transformation and participation. In an article on the theater’s appropriation of Eucharistic participation in post-Reformation England, Anthony Dawson observes that acting operates as a kind of transubstantiation: an actor “puts his body on the line” and then “retires it” in a way that Dawson equates with the “rough magic” at work when the wafer appears before the congregation only to disappear qua wafer.22 In this way, acting renders the internal life of a human being, otherwise hidden from view, accessible through a system of external signs. He further argues that this process was especially pronounced on the Elizabethan stage, as a reaction against the “incarnational aesthetic” of the medieval period.23 In other words, the stage translated the Protestant disavowal of Catholic transubstantiation into a grammar of character internalization: dramatic characters have no real presence, so to speak, only a virtual existence. Dawson “argu[es] for a kind of exchange whereby specifically theatrical effects are inflected by cultural preoccupations. The [Anglican] theological idea of virtual presence matched the experience of ‘person’ in the theatre, i.e. the notion that the presence of the theatrical person is simultaneously real and unreal.”24 Dawson, Regina Schwartz, Michael O’Connell and others have investigated the fate of sacramental theology on the post-Reformation English stage, but the relationship between the Eucharist and the early modern French stage has received scant attention. There is little doubt that, across the Channel, the Protestant rejection of exterior forms of worship, sensual sacramentality, and the hocus pocus of transubstantiation both underwrote the antirepresentational thrust of theater’s harshest critics and invited dramatists to explore the potential of dramatic representation to recast (Dawson) or recover (Schwartz) sacramentality through artistic form.25 At the same time, however, in predominately Catholic France—the uneasy confessional coexistence brokered by the Edict of Nantes notwithstanding—religious antithe[ 95 ]

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atrical writers fulminated against the idolatrous nature of the stage and dramatists and theorists of the theater alike engaged deeply with questions of representation, of what can be represented and how. If, in the English context, questions of representation were anchored in the Eucharist because of its disenchantment (to borrow a term that Schwartz borrows from historian and sociologist Marcel Gauchet), in the French context, questions of representation remained anchored in the Eucharist precisely because of its cultural prominence. Catholic religious culture in seventeenth-century France was characterized by renewed attention to Christocentric worship and, by extension, Eucharistic devotion. As Joseph Bergin has noted, “The Catholic Reformation made huge efforts of its own to promote Christ-centered devotional practices, especially Eucharistic ones.”26 The so-called French School of Spirituality, exemplified by such figures as Pierre Bérulle (1575–1629), the “apostle of the Incarnation,” and François de Sales (1567–1622), reinvigorated the late medieval devotio moderna movement by placing a special emphasis on cultivating a personal relationship with Christ. Accordingly, this movement saw the revitalization of practices such as the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, the Quarantore or “Forty-Hours” of continual prayer and contemplation before the Eucharist, displayed on a “tréteau” [trestle], and of course the practice of frequent communion, which would famously be condemned by Antoine Arnauld in his 1643 treatise. Additionally, a rich body of devotional literature, destined primarily for the laity, developed around the Blessed Sacrament. Louis Richeome’s popular and richly illustrated Tableaux sacres des figures mystiques du tres-auguste sacrifice et sacrament de l’Eucharistie (1601), for example, offered the reader a typological interpretation of fourteen Biblical episodes, organized into “tableaux,” that all prefigure the sacrament of the Eucharist. Corneille also contributed to this burgeoning body of devotional literature. A student of the Jesuits, he remained close to his mentors even after becoming a playwright. He composed, for example, an ode in honor of Claude Delidel’s antiJansenist treatise La Théologie des saints (1668) in which he thanks his former professor for imparting valuable spiritual lessons, and in the letter to the reader that precedes his tragedy Attila (1668), he claims that he submits his dramatic work to ecclesiastical as well as secular authorities.27 Scholars have long debated the role that Corneille’s close relationship with the Society of Jesus played in his dramatic output, in much the same way that they have debated the extent to which Racine’s education at Port-Royal determined his tragic vision.28 Consequently most studies of Corneille’s work that take into account his religious background focus on moral theology; very few consider the possible influence of sacramental theology. A [ 96 ]

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notable exception is Jean-Vincent Blanchard’s examination of the relationship between the visual dynamics in Richeome’s Tableaux sacrez and Polyeucte. Although Blanchard’s ultimate argument concerns the role of violence in the political sphere, he wisely observes that Corneille “writes as a careful student of theology.”29 Our present concern is with religious practices rather than moral theology, and with the ways in which a sacramental culture focused on the Eucharist might inform Cornelian dramaturgy. In addition to translating parts of the Divine Office, the Office of the Blessed Virgin, and hymns to Saints Genevieve and Victor, Corneille published a verse translation of the foremost spiritual classic of the devotio moderna movement: the De Imitatione Christi. This text, composed in the fifteenth century by Thomas à Kempis, a Dutch Augustinian priest, became a religious best-seller, with numerous editions and translations into all of the major European languages. Corneille’s translation, which he published from 1651 to 1659, was immensely popular in France, with over two million copies in circulation by the end of the eighteenth century.30 While Corneille’s L’Imitation de Jésus-Christ is not often considered in relation to his dramatic output, in part because it postdates many of his most important plays, André Stegmann has suggested that the two share a common moral vision.31 According to Stegmann, Cornelian heroism is not at odds with but indeed derives from a profoundly Christian worldview, nourished by the exaltation of self-sacrifice that he locates in the Imitation. While this approach has the merit of demonstrating that the Imitation is a worthy object of literary analysis, it also reduces religion to psychology. Accordingly, religion in Corneille’s theater plays a largely pyschological role, conditioning the “mystique héroïque cornélienne” [Cornelian heroic mysticism] that harmonizes the protagonists’ quest for self-realization with a providential plan.32 Stegmann explicitly rejects the interest of those portions of the Imitation that deal with religious practices such as prayer or communion. The last book, which Stegmann dismisses as being of little interest, is entirely devoted to the Blessed Sacrament.33 Yet the Imitation does not only describe a moral vision, it also presents a program for devotional practice and is in this way deeply imbued with a culture of sacramental participation. Indeed, participation in the sacraments, the visible means by which divine grace enters the world, is necessary for the “imitator’s” ongoing sanctification.34 In other works, Stegmann’s omission misses a fundamental component of the self-sacrificial ethic promulgated elsewhere in the Imitation: namely, the sacraments. If Polyeucte is indeed a “tragedy of grace,” as many have said, then it must necessarily be a “sacramental tragedy” as well. As we will see in what follows, the tragedy’s sacramentality is much more than a thematic [ 97 ]

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element, for it bears upon the way in which Corneille represents Polyeucte’s act of self-sacrifice. Polyeucte and the Sacrament of Baptism

The investigation of sacramentality in Polyeucte begins with the eponymous hero’s baptism, which occupies the first two acts. Sacraments differ from conventional signs in that they do not merely signify, but effectively transmit divine grace into the world.35 In so doing, sacraments effect change, they make something happen. In Polyeucte, Corneille firmly achors the operation of divine grace in sacramentality, to the extent that he altered the martyrological account found in Surius. At the outset of Corneille’s tragedy, Polyeucte has embraced the new faith but has not yet undergone the transformational rite of baptism. Polyeucte’s baptism, which takes place between Acts 1 and 2, is nowhere to be found in the the saint’s vita and is entirely of the poet’s invention. When Polyeucte returns to the stage in Act 2, scene 4, he belongs to a new community, a transformation adumbrated by his subtle repudiation of the gods: “vos dieux” [your gods] (l.595, emphasis mine). This and the following scene are rich with dramatic irony. Pauline is unaware that her husband has been transformed by the sacrament of baptism; the attentive reader (or spectator) knows that Polyeucte is “vivant” [alive] not only in the sense that he is safe and secure, dispelling Pauline’s fears that he was in mortal danger, but also that he has a new life through baptism.36 More intensely, when the messenger Cléon arrives in scene 5 to announce that the temple sacrifice is ready and, speaking to Polyeucte, says “pour sacrifier on n’attend plus que vous” [for the sacrifice, we await only you] (l.628), we know that the real sacrificial victim will be none other than Polyeucte. What Pauline fails to recognize is that her husband is now stamped with “le sacré caractère / Qui lave nos forfaits dans une eau salutaire” [the sacred character / That washes away our iniquities with salutary water] (ll.45–46). Not only does the sacrament of baptism wash away sin, it also imprints the catechumen with the indelible mark or “caractère” of belonging to a new community.37 Augustine compares the baptismal mark to the insignia of a soldier and the stamp on a coin.38 The Council of Trent reiterated this point, noting that baptism leaves “imprinted on the soul a character, that is, a certain spiritual and indelible mark,” a seal that cannot be effaced.39 Yet even Polyeucte’s fellow Christian Néarque initially misreads his “caractère” at the moment when Polyeucte expresses his desire to overturn the pagan idols, reproving his “zèle . . . trop ardent” [too ardent zeal] (l.653). [ 98 ]

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It is easy to see how Polyeucte’s baptism serves a clear dramatic purpose. It sets the stage for Polyeucte’s disruption of the pagan sacrifice and destruction of the idols. Without the zeal of a new convert, the otherwise humble Polyeucte’s gesture would appear out of character. Marked with a new “caractère,” however, he is now poised to die for his new faith. But Polyeucte’s baptism also serves a twofold theological purpose. First, it absolves the future martyr of criminal suicide. Second, it prefigures Polyeucte’s martyrdom and Pauline’s baptism in his blood. Dying for the faith is one thing, but actively seeking occasions to die a martyr’s death comes uneasily close to suicide. This was a thorny problem for the early church. In The City of God, Augustine questions the motivations of certain virgins who, during times of persecution, threw themselves into rivers, knowing full well they would drown, in order to preserve their chastity.40 And in 452, the Council of Arles explicitly condemned such behavior. Polyeucte’s rash decision does at first seems suicidal—“Vous trouverez la mort” [You’ll meet death] (l.655), Néarque warns him—but is soon recognized as a miraculous effect of divine grace. “Vous sortez du baptême, et ce qui vous anime / C’est sa grâce . . . elle agit pleinement” [You’ve just been baptized,” Néarque observes, “and what animates you / Is his grace . . . it is acting fully] (ll.693–695). As Marie Haley has noted, the tragedy explicitly endorses the theology of sacramental grace at this moment, when Néarque finally recognizes the source of his friend’s newfound zeal.41 It is thus through Polyeucte’s baptism that the tragedy first explores the nature of sacramentality. In addition to the sacrament of baptism by water, the early church recognized a second baptism, of blood. The expression baptism of blood or lavacrum sanguinis was first coined by Tertullian (On Baptism 16) to describe the blood shed by Christ as a kind of second baptism that enhances and completes the first. Additionally, Tertullian suggests that “baptism of the blood” may operate as a substitute for the purifying rite of baptism by water. Hic est baptismus [This is the baptism], he writes, qui lavacrum et non acceptum repraesentat [that makes actual a washing that has not been received].42 In other words, a believer who had not yet been baptized by water but who suffers martyrdom is effectively baptized in his or her own blood. Augustine similarly held that the martyrdom of an unbaptized believer is as effective in remitting his or her sin as sacramental baptism itself.43 The spilling of blood is thus an important martyrological trope. Normally associated with death, early Christians reinterpreted the loss of blood with new life. In this way, Tertullian famously claimed in his Apologeticum (50.13) that the blood of the martyrs is the seed (semen est sanguis christianorum) of the church, recasting martyrdom as a creative, generative act rather than one of extinction. Symbolically, [ 99 ]

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each drop of blood represented a new Christian, thereby strengthening increasing the ranks of the faithful. Blake Leyerle, in an article that demonstrates the “rich semantic web linking blood with fertility, sacrifice, control, ethnicity, and gender,” has suggested that Tertullian and the early Christian community sought to forge a “way of filiation” distinct from biological reproduction.44 Through the blood of the martyrs and, ultimately, through Christ’s sacrificial blood, Christians became members of a new body. Read against the theological backdrop of the generative potential of martyrdom, as the “seed” of the Church, the concern Corneille exhibits in the Examen for avoiding a “sterile” representation of Polyeucte’s martyrdom takes on new urgency. More than a simple reflection on repetition as a mark of poetic sterility, Corneille’s assertion also suggests that the representation itelf must avoid sterility, that good drama must touch or move the spectator beyond what is possible given the constraints of language. Here, poetics and theology converge in a novel way: the idle or unmoved spectator is as much a poetic failure as a theological one. To poetic and theological ends, Corneille slightly twists the martyrological trope of “baptism of the blood” in Act 5, where Pauline attributes her newfound faith to her husband’s spilled blood. More precisely, it is the sprinkling of his blood that occasions her conversion.45 Polyeucte’s blood is fertile, as it transforms both Pauline and, indirectly, her father Félix, creating two new Christians. Whereas other martyrological tragedies, like Desfontaines’s Le Martyre de saint Eustache, convey martyrdom’s conversionary potential by appealing to the extraordinary nature of the martyr’s suffering and its power to astonish the spectator, Corneille focuses more strongly on the visceral rather than the visual by representing Polyeucte’s martyrdom as a generative chain reaction. Moreover, this blood restores the filial bond that Pauline repudiated when she denounced her father as a “père barbare” [barbarous father] a repudiation underscored by the shift from more respectful “vous” to “tu” (ll.1719–20). In this way, substituting Pauline’s conversion for Polyeucte’s martyrdom not only avoids “sterile” repetition, it ensures the “fertility” of Polyeucte’s generative blood and the freshness of innovative representation. Baptism of Blood: Pauline’s Ethical Tra n s u b s t a n t i a t i o n

At the end of Polyeucte, Sévère returns to the stage with the intention to save Polyeucte’s life. He is, alas, too late. Polyeucte has already been executed. Instead, he bears witness to Félix’s miraculous conversion (“heureux changement”) and [ 100 ]

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consequent reunion with Pauline, who had converted between scenes 4 and 5. Moved by the sudden change in Félix’s attitude as much as by the tender restitution of filial bonds, Sévère exclaims, as though to address the audience: “Qui ne serait touché d’un si tendre spectacle? / De pareils changements ne vont point sans miracle” [Who wouldn’t be touched by so tender a sight? / Such changes do not happen wihout a miracle] (ll.1787–9). Such changes indeed appear extraordinary. Scholars have long sought to make sense of the rapid conversions that resolve the play. Some have postulated that Pauline’s conversion is purely rhetorical; her true motive lying in her steadfast love for Polyeucte.46 Others consider the conversions theatrical artifice, a deus ex machina that brings the play to a happy ending, like the secular, political conversions that end Cinna.47 Finally, some grapple with the relationship of the conversions to questions of grace or morality.48 In light of the previous discussion of “fertile” representation, the conversions may be better understood in poetic terms that do not exclude, but indeed invite and reinforce, theological considerations. As Corneille himself explains, Pauline’s conversion is the result of dramatic concern. I would argue that the conversion is not simply a means to bring the tragedy to a “happy end.” Rather, her transformation is inextricably linked to Polyeucte’s martyrdom, so much so that it functions as an almost sacramental substitute. In the 1660 Examen de Polyeucte, Corneille writes that Pauline’s “miraculous conversion” “faire connaître” [make[s] known] Polyeucte’s martyrdom, which is neither shown nor recounted to the spectators: “Je n’ai point fait de narration de la mort de Polyeucte. . . . Ainsi j’ai mieux aimé la faire connaître par un saint emportement de Pauline, que cette mort a convertie” [I did not narrate the death of Polyeucte. . . . So I preferred to make it known by the holy transport of Pauline, whom this death converted].49 Classically, the “narration de la mort,” a kind of hypotyposis, would bring the unseen before the eyes by means of a vivid description, as in Racine’s famous “récit de Théramène” in Phèdre. Whereas some authors of martyrological theater seemingly regaled in enumerating the martyr’s torments (e.g., Rotrou evokes the hooks and red-hot blades used against Genest), Corneille eschews such lurid details and instead focuses on the martyr’s moral qualities. In Act 3, scene 5, the gerunds and prepositional phrases Albin uses to recount Néarque’s martyrdom emphasize his behavior rather than the physical details of his execution: “En brutal, en impie, . . . En bravant les tourments, . . . Sans regret, sans murmure, . . . comme un chrétien enfin” [Like a beast, like a traitor, . . . braving the torture, . . . without regret, without groaning, . . . at last, like a Christian] (ll.993–997). The extent to which the pagan Albin is unable to grasp the theological significance of [ 101 ]

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Néarque’s death is measured by a vocabulary that places the martyr outside the political community (“impie”), civilization (“brutal”), and even biological life itself, for his impassive acceptance of death renders him stonelike (“l’endurcissement” [hardness]). Albin’s summary conclusion, “at last, like a Christian” (“comme un chrétien enfin”), excluded Christians from the Roman community by foregrounding their incomphrehensible alterity. Pauline, who earlier recognized the futility of executing Néarque, explained to her father that Christians operate according to an altogether different logic: “Tourmentés, déchirés, assassinés, n’importe, / Les supplices leur sont ce qu’à nous les plaisirs” [Tortured, torn apart, killed, it doesn’t matter, / Torment is to them what to us is pleasure] (ll.950–51). Thus when Corneille asserts in the Examen that he had no one to recount or hear Polyeucte’s death “que des païens” [but pagans], he is referring to the pagans’ astonishment and confusion before such extraordinary suffering. They misread the martyr’s suffering as obstinacy, failing to recognize its apologetic message. Foregoing hypotyposis and hiding Polyeucte’s death from view, Corneille engages directly with the problem of representing the extraordinary. If religious conversion can be a substitute for martyrdom, it is because sudden conversion is no less a product of divine agency, no less miraculous than the martyr’s physical and moral endurance: both flout the natural order of things and both serve to demonstrate the power of divinity. The prototypical figure for such a conversion is Paul of Tarsus, who famously experienced a dazzling vision of God on the road to Damascus and became a zealous defender of the faith.50 As though martyrdom did not already test the limits of verisimilitude, Corneilles waxes apologetic in the Examen, defending the miraculous conversions on the grounds that they are common enough in religious texts to be verisimilar: [les deux conversions], quoique miraculeuses, sont si ordinaires dans les martyres, qu’elles ne sortent point de la vraisemblance, parce qu’elles ne sont pas de ces événements rares et singuliers qu’on ne peut tirer en exemple. 51 [[the two conversions], although they are miraculous, are so ordinary in accounts of martyrdom, that they do not exceed the limits of verisimilitude, because they do not belong to those rare and singular events from which one cannot make an example.]

It is important to bear in mind that the conversions of Pauline and Félix are poetic inventions, absent from Polyeucte’s martyrology. Corneille’s need to justify them [ 102 ]

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arises both from the fact that he has altered the hagiographical material and that his invention is miraculous in nature; Corneille is thus dangerously infringing upon authorial territory that belongs to God (as the author of miracles) alone. Christian miracles no doubt challenge the rational framework of Aristotelian dramatic theory, threatening to destabilize the fictional universe constructed by the poet—a universe governed by the principle of verisimilitude—in the same way that they interrupted the order of the physical universe.52 If supernatural phenomena reveal the hand of God at work in the world, the presence of miracles on stage, within the context of a coherent, rational, and intelligible plot, amounts to nothing less than a deus ex machina, revealing all too clearly the hand of the poet. Corneille insists, however, that conversions are so ordinary (“si ordinaires”) in hagiography that their context, and the spectator’s assumed familiarity with this context, confers upon them a certain degree of verisimilitude.53 Pauline’s sudden conversion does not stand alone, but serves to communicate her husband’s death (“la faire connaître”) to the spectator. Unlike a narration, which allows the spectator to form a mental picture of the saint’s martyrdom thereby recuperating the lost visual component of martyrdom, Pauline’s conversion translates the martyrdom’s effects on the witness. In other words, her radical change in character functions as a miraculous sign that God’s grace is at work in the world: “Ce n’est point ma douleur . . . , / C’est la grâce qui parle” [It isn’t my grief . . . , / It’s grace that speaks] (ll.1741–42). As such, her conversion is sacramental in the broadest sense, where sacramentum designates any visible sign— natural, supernatural, or conventional—of God’s invisible grace. Like baptism, which Polyeucte called the “sacré caractère” [sacred character] of Christian identity, sacraments are dynamic; they do not simply point toward a reality removed from the present in both space and time, but to an active, albeit invisible, presence. In the interval between scenes 3 and 5 of the final act, Pauline, like her husband before her, undergoes a kind of baptism. The bloody spectacle of Polyeucte’s martyrdom is brought forth onto the stage by the freshly converted Pauline, whose dramatic reappearance in blood-stained garments, lashing out at her father with uncharacteristic vehemence, constitutes the penultimate scene of the tragedy. Pauline, bearing traces of Polyeucte’s blood that silently but certainly convey the martyr’s death, embodies a material link between what takes place offstage (Polyeucte’s matyrdom) and what Félix (and we) behold on stage. Where Polyeucte’s impassioned speech failed (5.3) to convert his wife, the undeniable material testimony of his blood succeeds. As Andrea Frisch puts it, Catholic martyrial “testimony is inherently sacrificial; the first-person witness must be destroyed in order for his [ 103 ]

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testimony to be authoritative.”54 The martyr’s torture and death thus guarantee his or her testimony. Further, the persuasive power of this testimony seemingly lies in the sensual rather than the linguistic and rational. Pauline attributes her salvation directly to Polyeucte’s blood, traces of which remain on her robes: Son sang, dont tes bourreaux viennent de me couvrir, M’a dessillé les yeux, et me les vient d’ouvrir. Je vois, je sais, je crois, je suis désabusée. De ce bienheureux sang tu me vois baptisée: Je suis chrétienne enfin. . . .55 [His blood, which your executioners have covered me with, Has set me straight and opened my eyes. I see, I know, I believe, I am disabused. You see me baptized in this blessed blood: I am, at last, a Christian.]

The “triste spectacle” [sad spectacle] (l.1717) of Polyeucte’s martyrdom occasions not tears of mourning, but salutary drops of blood. In death, Polyeucte acquires an agency that he did not enjoy while alive and succeeds in converting his wife. Pauline is quite literally baptized (from Greek baptizein, “to immerse”) in her husband’s blood. In a slightly heterodox twist on the martyrological theme of lavacrum sanguinis, Corneille attributes salvific powers to the martyr’s “bienheureux sang” [blessed blood]. Now, since at least Théophile de Viau’s Pyrame et Thisbé (1621), the sight of blood played a powerful rhetorical role in French theater. In addition to producing a strong emotional effect (pathos), it prompted characters toward action. In Le Cid (1637), for example, Corneille endows paternal blood with the power to speak directly to a daughter’s heart and the spilled blood spells out on the ground what she must to do avenge her father’s death. But Polyeucte’s blood is more than persuasive, it is efficacious. When Pauline earlier asked her husband what he desired most (her conversion), he replied: “ce que de tout mon sang je voudrais acheter” [what I wish to purchase with all my blood]. Like the blood of Christ, Polyeucte’s holy blood has the power to redeem another.56 Pauline’s miraculous conversion serves a theatrical as much as a theological purpose. Dramatically, her conversion is the visible sign of Polyeucte’s unseen martyrdom; it “makes known” an invisible reality. But this is neither hypotyposis nor teichoscopy: the unseen spectacle of Polyeucte’s martyrdom is brought forth onto the stage through Pauline’s blood-spattered garments. These traces of blood, material evidence of the execution, exceed the usual mimetic relationship between what [ 104 ]

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D’Aubignac, long before Saussure, calls the “représentant” [representer] and the “représenté” [represented].57 The relationship between martyrdom and conversion here is not one of resemblance, but of causality. The spectator knows Polyeucte’s martyrdom (the cause) thanks to and at the same time as Pauline’s conversion (the effect). In this way, Corneille’s treatment of Polyeucte’s death could be understood as indexical. That is, the spectator is made aware of the the referent (Polyeucte’s martyrdom) not by any relationship of superficial resemblance nor symbolism (the way, say, a palm frond could be said to represent martyrdom), but solely by virtue of the physical relationship between the sign and its referent, like smoke and fire or, to use a classic example, a weathervane and the wind.58 To be sure, such instances of indexicality are not uncommon in theater. The bloody sword that Don Sanche brings to Chimène in Le Cid (5.5) is (mis)interpreted by Chimène to indicate that Rodrigue had been killed. But unlike a bloodstained sword, which merely indexes a wounding that had already happened, Pauline’s dynamic conversion scene indexes the active presence of divine grace and its extraordinary effects. Her profession of faith occurs at the very moment we would normally expect a narration bringing Polyeucte’s death before our mind’s eye. Indeed, at this point in the tragedy, Pauline articulates a convergence between the visible and the invisible. “Je vois Néarque et [Polyeucte] qui me tendent les bras” [I see Néarque and him [Polyeucte] extending their arms], she tells her father, as though she already has one foot in the hereafter. Pauline’s indexical function allows for Félix’s subsequent conversion. First, by demonstrating the miraculous effects of Polyeucte’s martyrdom and second, by bringing his salvific blood into the presence of Félix. Succumbing to “transports” that he is at pains to understand (as Polyeucte reminded him in 5.2, religious faith is “un don du ciel, et non de la raison” [a gift from heaven, not reason] l.1554), the Armenian governor, like Pauline, attributes his conversion directly to Polyeucte: C’est lui, n’en doutez point, dont le sang innocent Pour son persécuteur prie un Dieu tout-puissant; Son amour épandu sur toute la famille Tire après lui le père aussi bien que la fille. J’en ai fait un martyr, sa mort me fait chrétien.59 [It’s he, no doubt, whose innocent blood Prays to an all-powerful God for his persecutor; His love spread out over an entire family Pulls with him a father as well as a daughter. I made him a martyr, his death makes me a Christian.] [ 105 ]

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Here, Félix’s lines allude to the Catholic doctrine of the communion of saints, according to which saints are able to intercede on behalf of mortals. Significantly, it is not Polyecute but rather his blood which is endowed with this intercessory power. This blood is central, reinforced by the verb “épandre,” the literal meaning of which is “to spread out” or “sprinkle,” and which generally applies to liquids. The possessive adjective of “amour” appears to refer to “Dieu tout-puissant,” but it could also refer to Polyeucte, whose blood has also been “(r)épandu” over the family. Pauline’s self-designation as a “second hostie” [second host] (l.1720) deserves some attention, given her role as that which joins the visible, material world with the invisible communion of saints, parallel to her dramatic function as that which joins the visible stage with the invisible wings of the theater. To be sure, “hostie” could simply indicate any sacrificial victim.60 Corneille had already used the word in Horace (l. 768), where “Rome” is the “divinity” that requires human sacrifice and will, through Horace’s fratricidal arm, immolate the seditious Camille. Similarly, Pauline is prepared to die a martyr’s death for having renounced the gods of Rome. But in addition to its primary meaning of “sacrifice,” “hostie” could also designate the sacrament of the Eucharist, the “Corps sacré de Nôtre Seigneur JESUS-CHRIST renfermé sous les especes du pain & du vin, qui est immolé tous les jours sur les autels” [sacred body of our Lord Jesus-Christ enclosed in the species of bread and wine, which is sacrificed every day on the altar].61 Polyeucte in fact alludes to this daily sacrifice when he explains the doctrine of the Incarnation before Félix (5.3): “un Dieu qui, nous aimant d’une amour infinie, . . . Veut pour nous en victime être offert chaque jour” [a God who, loving us with an infinite love, . . . / Wants each day to offer himself to us as a victim] (ll.1659–1662).62 In the mouth of a newly converted Christian and before an audience of ostensibly Christian theatergoers, the word “hostie” cannot help but have a sacramental resonance.63 After all, what is the Eucharist if not the “conversion,” or more precisely, the “transubstantiation” by which the bread’s substance undergoes a miraculous transformation, while maintaining the accidents (appearance, texture, and taste) of bread?64 During the thirteenth session of the Council of Trent, which convened in 1551 and reaffirmed the doctrine of transubstantiation, the Eucharist was solemnly defined as the “miraculous conversion” of the substance of the bread (mirabilem . . . conversionem . . . totius substantiae panis).65 There is no doubt that the Pauline who appears in Act 5, scene 5 is substantially different from the obedient daughter of the four preceding acts. She may physically resemble the Pauline of the previous acts, but she now has a completely transformed identity [ 106 ]

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(“Je suis chrétienne enfin,” l.1729). One might say that her “character,” that is, a set of distinctive moral traits, has been altered, impressed with the indelible mark of baptism. Moreover, as a re-presentation of Polyeucte’s martyrdom, she not only indexes it, but also transmits its effectiveness, as though her conversion and his martyrdom were one in the same divine “ouvrage” [work] (l.1719). Polyeucte’s behind-the-scenes martyrdom is made present, its effects are seen and heard even though his broken body is out of sight. The Eucharistic wafer analogously brings into existence an unseen but nevertheless “real presence.” As Corneille writes in the Imitation: “En cet adorable mystère / Je te vois présent en effet. . . . Sous une apparance étrangère” [In this adorable mystery / I see you effectively present. . . . Beneath an alien appearance].66 The converted or “transubstantiated” Pauline both obscures Polyeucte’s martyrdom, insofar as she literally stands in for its narration, and reveals it by manifesting its effects through her physical presence. Frisch fittingly describes the body of the Catholic martyr as “resolutely non-linguistic. It does not suffice to talk about it or read about it or hear about it.”67 It must be seen, touched, or otherwise experienced. It was of course not possible to portray Polyeucte’s execution on stage, given the dramatic constraints of the period, and according to Pierre Pasquier, the impossibility of representing the martyr’s tortured body weakened the enterprise of martyrological tragedy.68 And yet Corneille demonstrates a clever way out of this impasse. To be sure, exhibiting the body of Polyeucte was unthinkable. But a “narration de la mort,” in other words, talking about death, does not convey the full force of martyrdom. It is thus through Pauline’s miraculous conversion that Corneille is able to represent the principle subject of his tragedy without diminishing its solemn “dignité” [dignity].69 The similarities between the sacrament of the Eucharist, which manifests God’s “real presence” through the words of institution (hoc est enim corpus meum), simultaneously obscuring Christ’s body and bringing it forth through the sacramental emblems of bread and wine, and Pauline’s conversion may indeed be coincidental, but it is nevertheless intriguing that Corneille preferred to exploit the indexical relationship between martyrdom and conversion, between Polyeucte’s broken body and the bloodstains on Pauline’s garments, rather than adopt the more convetional narration of his hero’s martyrdom. Such an alternative representational strategy did, however, offer real advantages. It solved both the problem of “sterile” repetition and the problem of reception (the mouths and ears of pagans were not worthy to pronounce or hear the “dignité” of Polyeucte’s martyrdom). [ 107 ]

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At the same time, however, Polyeucte was performed in a secular theater by professional actors for paying customers. Although Corneille congratulates himself for having pleased “tout ensemble les dévots et les gens du monde” [altogether the devout and the worldly], the miraculous conversions of Pauline and Félix remain, as he notes in the Abrégé, “inventions et embellissements de théâtre” [theatrical inventions and embellishments].70 From a poetic point of view, both conversions serve to calm the mind of the spectator (“servent à remettre le calme dans les esprits”), without which, Corneille writes, “j’aurais eu bien de la peine à retirer du Théâtre dans un état qui rendît la pièce complète, en ne laissant rien à souhaiter à la curiosité de l’audieur” [I would have had great difficulty quitting the theater in a state that made the play complete, leaving nothing to the spectator’s curiosity].71 Through conversion, Pauline joins her husband. Similarly, Félix’s conversion reunites him with his daughter. It thus repairs the filial bonds that had been disrupted by Polyeucte’s iconoclastic gesture and, later, by Pauline’s disavowal of paternal authority. Additionally, conversion “reconciles” the spectator with Félix, according to Corneille.72 Witness to this mystical reunion—or communion—is Sévère, who appears immune to the conversionary contagion prompted by Polyeucte’s death. Instead, moved by what he sees as a touching reconciliation of father and daughter, he pledges to protect the new Christians and promises to seek an end to their persecution upon his return to Rome, a bold and perhaps reckless endeavor made plausible only by his considerable “crédit” [reputation] (l.279, l.1805) with the emperor Décie. Although such a declaration of religious tolerance could be seen as an appropriately optimistic finale to Polyeucte, gesturing toward the historic spread of the Gospel and the demise of paganism, Sévère’s ultimate refusal to accept Christianity’s exclusivity troubles the “calme” [tranquility] that Corneille purports to instill. L a t e t o t h e Ta b l e : Sévère’s Theological Failure

The analogy between Pauline’s conversion—her “ethical transubstantiation”—and the sacrament of the Eucharist is troubled by the presence of Sévère, the only major character who does not convert. He alone is excluded from the salvific chain reaction set in motion by Polyeucte’s martyrdom. This is all the more striking given that Sévère is, of all the play’s pagan characters, the most sympathetic toward Christians. In Act 4, scene 6, Sévère admits to his confidant Fabian that [ 108 ]

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he does not understand why the Empire continues to persecute Christians, not only because it permits other foreign cults, like “les dieux d’Egypte” [the gods of Egypt], and mystery religions, like that of “Cérès Eleusine” [Eleusinian Ceres], but also because in all other respects Christians are model subjects, virtuous and loyal. Given this relatively tolerant view of religious pluralism along with his positive opinion of the Empire’s Christian population, his conversion would seem much less “miraculous” than the others, better prepared by the plot, and indeed the most probable or plausible. Why, then, should Sévère remain, unconvinced, at the end of the tragedy? Many have argued that Pauline’s position in the tragedy is analogous to that of the spectator. Her premonitory dream, her audience with Sévère, her visit to Polyeucte in prison and, finally, her presence at his martyrdom all seem contribute to Pauline’s role as spectator. Mitchell Greenberg, for example, has rightly noted that the spectator “do[es] not ‘witness’ the execution; it is not part of the dramatic ‘representation.’”73 Greenberg continues, “we have been kept, like Pauline, in the position of spectator. Our gaze informs the tragedy, but as its outside, its grounding.”74 While this is certainly true of the spectator, Pauline does witness her husband’s execution, between scenes 4 and 5 of the final act. Additionally, her conversion grants her a kind of spiritual vision thanks to which she “sees” Néarque and Polyeucte extending their arms toward her. Greenberg’s fascinating analysis of the role of spectacle in Polyeucte overlooks the only character whose gaze is, from the very beginning, outside the principal action of the tragedy: Sévère. Sévère arrives in Armenia to observe a public sacrifice celebrating a Roman victory over the Persians, only to find himself the accidental witness to a crisis that shakes the province’s first family. He had earlier enjoyed a romantic liaison with Pauline and we learn that his official mission to Melitene is for him a pretext; he is still in love. Sévère’s desire will, however, be met with obstacles—the first of which is Pauline’s marriage to Polyeucte—and, continually frustrated, will never be satisfied. Sévère in many ways incarnates the foreign other: an emissary from Rome and so a foreign visitor to Melitene, an outsider with respect to the family unit comprised of Félix, Pauline, and Polyeucte, a virtuous pagan, and, finally, a spectator who bears witness to the politico-religious family drama without actually participating in it. Like a spectator, his presence sets in motion the crisis of Polyeucte and like a spectator, he is incapable of acting to determine its outcome.75 Indeed, Sévère nearly always appears on the stage too late to be effective. Sévère arrives too late to marry Pauline, who has already married Polyeucte, he arrives too late to save Polyeucte from death, and he arrives too late to convert at the end [ 109 ]

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of the tragedy. He appears always outside, always at arms-length. Structurally, too, Sévère is pushed to the margins: appearing for the first time in 2.1, he is absent from 2.2 until 4.5 and 6, and does not appear again in 5.6. He, like the spectator, will return home. The distance between Sévère and the conversions that end the tragedy is especially critical, because it tempers the religious fervor that otherwise characterizes the play’s conclusion. Although he resists conversion, he declares himself a “protecteur” [protector] of the Christians in the name of religious tolerance. This act seems at first glance to be a fittingly optimistic end to Polyeucte, but upon further analysis, deflates the religious zeal stirred up by Polyeucte’s martyrdom: Sans doute vos chrétiens, qu’on persécute en vain, Ont quelque chose en eux qui surpasse l’humain. ... Je les aimai toujours, quoi qu’on m’en ait pu dire: Je n’en vois point mourir que mon coeur n’en soupire; Et peut-être qu’un jour je les connaitrai mieux. J’approuve cependant que chacun ait ses dieux, Qu’il les serve à sa mode, et sans peur de la peine.76 [Without a doubt your Christians, who are persecuted in vain, Have something in them that surpasses the human. ... I have loved them always, no matter what was said about them: I do not watch them die, without my heart sighing; And maybe one day I’ll know them better. However, I approve that each has his gods, That he serve them in his fashion, without fear of punishment.]

Sévère speaks of “vos chrétiens” [your Christians], reaffirming his identity as a pagan and resisting the otherwise communicable conversion. He does, however, express compassion for their unjust persection. While this apparent change of heart might look like a kind of conversion, transforming persecutor into protector, it is in fact consonant with his skepticism toward all religion. We are uniquely privy to Sévère’s beliefs, as he expressed them earlier to his servant Fabian. When Sévère returned to the stage at the end of Act 4, he admitted that the empire’s anti-Christian decrees make little sense considering that the secretive cults of “Cérès Eleusine” [Eleusinian Ceres] and “la Bonne Déesse” [the Good Goddess] [ 110 ]

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are tolerated and “tous les monstres d’Egypte ont leurs temple dans Rome” [all the monsters of Egypt have temples in Rome] (ll.1419, 1423).77 Why should the Christian God be treated any differently? This should give pause to any optimistic reading of Sévère’s declaration of religious tolerance since it relativizes religious belief. In Katherine Ibbett’s compelling interpretation of the declaration, Sévère’s ultimate concern is the integrity of the state, which “must sustain multiple interests” as a matter of good policy. “[A]llowing the Christians to live the Roman state absorbs and defuses the threat they pose” to its stability. 78 In other words, what seems like a gesture of goodwill is in fact political strategy, recalling Augustus’s clemency in Cinna. Yet an emphasis on the political “absorption” of Christians by the Roman state skirts the theological consequences of Sévère’s declaration. He does decriminalize Christianity, but he does so only by admitting Christ to the eclectic pantheon of deities both autochthonous and foreign worshipped throughout the Roman Empire, thus robbing the monotheistic faith of its essential exclusivity. This is indeed a troubling stance in a martyrological tragedy whose final, doxological line promises to “faire retentir partout le nom de Dieu” [everywhere sound the name of God] (l.1814). As R. C. Knight has perceptively noted, Sévère’s religious tolerance “can take [Corneille] much further than he knows or, probably, wishes.”79 In fact, Sévère’s final lines echo the policies of one of Christianity’s greatest enemies: the emperor Julian (331–63), dubbed “the Apostate” by Christian historiographers. A member of the Constantinian dynasty, Julian abandoned the religion of his parents and became the last pagan ruler of the Roman Empire. In order to restore the values of the old empire and preserve it from dissolution, Julian undertook a campaign to eradicate the Christian menace and reinstate paganism as the state religion. To that end, unlike his anti-Christian predecessors Diocletian and Decius who outlawed the new faith and ordered capital punishment for its followers, Julian issued in 362 an edict of religious tolerance. This was hardly noble gesture, but it was shrewd politics, for the measure was intended to weaken the Christians’ political clout by encouraging internal dissent and division. Persecution was not only ineffective, it also backfired. Christians were known for growing stronger the more they are oppressed. “We multiply whenever we are mown down by you (plures efficimur, quotiens metimur a vobis); the blood of Christians is seed,” wrote Tertullian in the Apologeticus (50.13–14). In Corneille’s tragedy, Sévère translates this passage (“Se relever plus forts, plus ils sont abattus” (ll.1792–93)) but to very different ends, for where Tertullian concludes that the Christian martyrs are acquitted by God (a Deo absolvimur) (50.16), Sévère [ 111 ]

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acknolwedges only that their extraordinary resilience “N’est pas aussi l’effet des communes virtus” [is not the effect of ordinary strength] without accepting this as a demonstration of their faith’s exclusive purchase on the truth. From a political perspective, Sévère observes not only the Christian “threat,” as Ibbett puts it, to the Empire but also the failure of imperial policy to eliminate that threat. By granting Christians relative religious freedom, Julian hoped to succeed where others had failed. No longer united against persecutory edicts, the Christians would become entrenched in internal theological quibbles and cease to pose a serious threat. Julian was accordingly excoriated by apologists, theologians, and historians up through the middle ages, but underwent something of a rehabilitation in the early modern period.80 Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), in a literary portrait of Julian, wrote that the edict of tolerance intended to “espandre et semer la division” and thereby “émousser l’éguillon qui s’affine par la rareté, la nouvelleté et la difficulté.”81 In other words, precisely because persecution produced the opposite of its intended effect, religious tolerance would staunch the flow of blood that promised to increase the ranks of the Christians—semen est sanguis christianorum. The essay “De la liberté de la conscience” is of particular importance to Polyeucte because Sévère’s lines in Act IV, scene 6 and Act V, scene 6 bear an uncanny resemblance to Montaigne’s portrayal of Julian. According to Montaigne, the emperor “prenoit luy-mesme la peine d’ouyr es parties; et encore que par curiosité il s’informast à ceux qui se presentoient à luy de quelle religion ils estoient.”82 Similarly, Sévère wishes to learn more about Christianity “par curiosité” [out of curiosity] (l.1415) although he lacks both Julian’s animosity toward Christians and his attachment to paganism.83 The sentence that has the greatest resonance with Corneille’s tragedy appears in Montaigne’s description of the emperor’s edict: Julian “amonnesta . . . que chacun sans empeschement et sans crainte servit à sa religion.”84 Sévère’s declaration is remarkably similar in both form and substance: “J’approuve cependant que chacun ait ses dieux, qu’il les serve à la mode, et sans peur de la peine” [Nevertheless I accept that each has his gods, that he serve them in his fashion without fear]. Like Montaigne’s Julian, Corneille’s virtuous pagan character endorses an individual’s (“chacun”) freedom to worship (“servir”) without fear (“sans crainte,” “sans peur de la peine”). For Montaigne, of course, religious tolerance was an urgent question, as France was torn by the Wars of Religion (1562–1598) between Protestants and Catholics. He thus uses Julian to argue in favor of preserving “la religion et la police ancienne du pays”—Catholicism.85 By the 1640s, the Protestant-Catholic divide was less acute. Thanks to the Edict of Nantes (1598), the Protestants were relatively free to practice their faith, although [ 112 ]

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the suppression of several rebellions in the 1620s, culminating in the Peace of Alais (1629), resulted in the abrogation of certain political and territorial rights. Whatever the political resonance of Sévère’s tolerant stance, he introduces a troubling relativisim that seems at odds with the logic of martyrdom. He is a skeptic who doubts the existence of pagan deities: “Les nôtres bien souvent s’accordent mal ensemble; / Et, me dût leur colère écraser à tes yeux, / Nous en avons beaucoup pour être de vrais dieux” [Ours often fit poorly together / And, may their anger crush me before your eyes, / There are so many that they cannot be real gods] (ll.1432–34). Sévère is immune both to the zeal that animates Décie against the Christians and, more immediately, to the conversionary contagion initiated by Polyeucte’s death. Sévère is more than a virtuous pagan; he is a virtuous skeptic. As such, he resolves to save Polyeucte’s life for the sake of his affection for Pauline and his admiration for Polyeucte. But he arrives too late, unable to stop an execution that has proceeded without him. Similarly, he misses the dramatic return of Pauline. He arrives moments later, his imprecations echoing those of Pauline: “Père dénaturé, malheureux politique, / Esclave ambitieux d’une peur chimérique” [Unnatural father, unfortunate legislator, / Ambitious slave to imaginary fears] (ll.1747–48). He does, however, arrive in time to witness Félix’s conversion and the reconciliation of father and daughter: Qui ne serait touché d’un si tendre spectacle? De pareils changements ne vont point sans miracle: Sans doute vos chrétiens, qu’on persécute en vain, Ont quelque chose en eux qui surpasse l’humain.86 [Who would not be touched by so tender a spectacle? Such changes do not take place without a miracle: Without a doubt your Christians, who are persecuted in vain, Have something in them that surpasses the human.]

We have already seen that Sévère’s “vos chrétiens” places him outside the Christian community. He is not, however, incapable of being moved by the miraculous restoration of family bonds made possible through conversion. Seen through Sévère’s eyes, the effects of Polyeucte’s martyrdom descend from the transcendent to the mundane, from the divine to the human. Anyone and everyone (including the spectators) should be touched by this final spectacle, however irrational and incredible it may be (“De pareils changements ne vont point sans miracle”). The “miracle,” as we’ll see in the next section, can just as easily refer to the unexpected [ 113 ]

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nature of the conversion as to the “signs and wonders” wrought by God and his servants.87 Sévère’s spectatorship, then, is firmly grounded in a human, rational, and even skeptical appreciation of the conversions. They are wondrous, but if they have any transcendental significance, he cannot (or will not) grasp it. Here, the miraculous spectacle, thanks to what one might call Sévère’s theatrical gaze, departs from its theological context to become a “tendre spectacle,” capable of touching or moving any human being. In this way, Sévère’s theological failure, that is, to recognize the miracles as manifestations of sacred agency, does not preclude theatrical success: for what is lost as theology is maintained as theater—a different kind of miracle, one that flouts the poetic rule of reason rather than the laws of nature. The Poetic Miracle of Conversion

When Sévère exclaims that such sudden changes do not happen “without a miracle,” he is speaking as an outsider, a skeptic, a spectator. Consequently, one might ask how someone in his position can legitimately call the conversions miraculous. For early modern playwrights and theorists of theater, the performance of religious conversion upsets the discursiveness and rationality upon which neoclassical dramaturgy rests. Conversion is, at its most basic, change. One of the fundamental components of tragedy is peripeteia: a change in the course of events, reversal, or “conversion.”88 According to Aristotle, “[r]eversal, as indicated, is a complete swing in the direction of the action; but this, we insist, must conform to probability or necessity.”89 D’Aubignac employs this term to gloss peripeteia: “Péripétie, c’est à dire, . . . conversion et retour d’affaires” [Peripeteia, which is to say, . . . conversion and turn of events].90 Chapelain similarly understands peripeteia as “la conversion ou le changement de fortune” [conversion or change in fortune] in his Préface de l’Adone (1623).91 In these cases, “conversion” refers to a change in the course of events in the play. In other words, at the level of the plot. Aristotle is clear on this point: “[r]eversal . . . should arise from the intrinsic structure of the plot, so that what results follows by either necessity or probability from the preceding events.”92 Reversal may be unexpected, but it is nevertheless conditioned by prior events, allowing the spectator or reader to appreciate, retrospectively, the sequence of events that made it possible. Religious conversion, on the other hand, transfers reversal from the plot (mythos) to the character (ethos), signaling a significant departure from the Poet[ 114 ]

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ics. In religious conversion, the reversal results from a change in character, which in turn affects the development of the plot. This movement, from the character outward toward the plot, is the inverse of Aristotelian dramaturgy. Indeed, for Aristotle, characters necessarily depend on the plot and not the other way around, as reflected in his use of the term prattontes to describe the (en)actors of a tragedy, whose purpose is to enact the (predetermined) plot, itself the “representation of an action” (mimesis praxeos). Just as the (en)actors are little more than the agents through which the action of the plot plays out, so too are the characters their fictional equivalent. For this reason, Denis Guénoun has described Aristotle’s characters as purely functional, “une modalité de la mise en relation des actions du drame, comme une sorte d’habillage ou d’épaisseur” [a method of linking the events of the drama, like a kind of dressing or thickness].93 Similarly, Roselyne Dupont-Roc and Jean Lallot, in their commentary of the Poetics, explain that Aristotle’s character or ethos “est présenté comme une donnée que manifeste l’histoire elle-même” [is presented as a feature manifested by the plot itself ] rather than an autonomous psychological agent.94 The subordination of character to plot illustrates why, for Aristotle and for the neo-Aristotelian critics of the seventeenth century, characters (ethe) must remain constant. In the Poetics (1454a16–33), Aristotle signals four defining qualities of the dramatic ethos: characters must be noble (khrestos), appropriate (harmotton), faithful (homoios), and, finally, consistent (homalon). Characters must remain consistent, that is, the same, throughout the duration of the tragedy because they do not exist independently of the plot. It follows that characters who change are to be avoided. The classic example is that the eponymous character from Euripides’s Iphigeneia in Aulis: “for the girl who beseeches bears no resemblance to the latter girl.”95 Iphigeneia quite suddenly changes from pleading for her life to embracing death. According to Aristotle, such character inconsistancy is defective because, like all components of the plot, a character’s behavior must submit to the rule of probability and necessity. Seventeenth-century critics and playwrights followed Aristotle in prescribing character consistancy or “égalité” [evenness]. La Mesnardière, for example, in his Poëtique (1639), devotes an entire chapter to “Les Moeurs,” the usual translation of ethe (from the Latin mos, mores). He writes that “le Poëte doit observer [l’Egalité] dans les manières d’agir qu’il a donné à ses Personnages, & ne pas faire qu’un Héros soit modeste en une rencontre & insolent en une autre” [the poet must observe [consistancy] in the conduct that he gives his characters, and must not make a hero humble in one meeting and insolent in another].96 Corneille simi[ 115 ]

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larly observes that “l’égalité . . . nous oblige à conserver jusqu’à la fin à nos Personnages les Moeurs que nous leur avons données au commencement” [consistancy . . . compels us to maintain the habits that we gave our characters at the beginning until the very end].97 Evidently, Corneille’s understanding of consistancy allows for considerable latitude, for Pauline, like Iphigeneia, is altogether different at the end of the tragedy. Aristotle allows for inconsistency of character in only one instance: when inconstistancy itself is an attribute of the character. In such cases, the character must remain “consistently inconsistent” (homalos anomalon). Dupont-Roc and Lallot point out that Aristotle’s phrasing ho ten mimesin parekhon (“that which is the object of representation”) in this passage is curious in that it signals the distance between the model (what they call the “l’objet-modèle” [model]) and its imitation (“l’objet-copie” [copy]). A human being may act inconsistently in reality; his or her character in turn may act this way, provided he or she does so consistently. Dupont-Roc and Lallot rightly conclude that “la qualification éthique ne peut avoir de sens que dans le domaine du réel; ce qui relève de la représentation, au contraire, c’est l’exigence logique de cohérence” [ethical qualification only makdes sense in the domain of the real; on the contrary, what concerns representation is the logical requirement of coherence].98 Iphigenia is defective not simply because she is inconsistent, but because she is inconsistently inconsistent. Inconsistent inconsistency, a radical change in character that has no basis in the logic of the plot, characterizes the kind of sudden, miraculous religious conversions that conclude Polyeucte. Bossuet, for example, writes of Anne de Gonzague that, at the moment of her conversion, “Dieu, qui n’a besoin ni de temps ni d’un long circuit de raisonnements pour se faire entendre, tout à coup . . . ouvrit les yeux” [God, who needs neither time nor convoluted arguments to make himself heard, suddenly . . . opened the eyes].99 This sudden illumination, he continues, is nothing short of miraculous. On stage, a radical change in religious belief cannot be understood in terms of the plot alone and appeals to an extratextual explanation, like divine grace or, from a purely poetic point of view, authorial heavy-handedness. To the characters woven into the fabric of the plot it is inexplicable. As Pauline reminds her father, who believes he can convince his son-in-law to recant: “quittez cette espérance / Que deux fois en un jour il change de croyance [abandon this hope / that twice in one day he’ll change his beliefs”] (ll.937–38). Conversion, as a unique change, cannot therefore be rendered consistent without diminishing its theological significance as a demonstration of divine agency. Nor can it be rendered consistent without weakening its dramatic effect. In other words, conversion cannot be made [ 116 ]

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“consistently inconsistent.” Rather, like Iphigenia’s change in behavior, conversion is a singular event. If, for Corneille, the conversions of Pauline and Félix at the end of Polyeucte are “miraculous,” it is not only by virtue of their apparent reference to divine grace that they are so. In fact, the conversions function as the final reversal or “conversion et retour d’affaires” (D’Aubignac) that brings the tragedy to a close. They constitute a coup de théâtre that is all the more surprising not only because it is unforeseen, but also because it tests the limits of verisimilitude. Such a coup de théâtre is indeed marvelous. According to Chapelain, the marvelous or “merveilleux” is closely related to reversal, resulting from the organization of the plot, not from without. La merveille a les mêmes sources; la nature du sujet produit le merveilleux lorsque par un enchaînement de causes non forcées ni appelées de dehors, on voit résulter des événements ou contre l’attente ou contre l’ordinaire. 100 [The marvelous has the same origins; the nature of the subject produces the marvelous when unexpected or extraordinary events result from a sequence of causes neither forced nor called from beyond [the text].]

The inscription of the marvelous in fiction renders it verisimilar without diminishing its capacity to astonish. As Forestier puts it, “Le merveilleux est donc le résultat de la péripétie ou coup de théâtre, qui démêle l’action par une voie inattendue qui provoque la surprise, mais qui est explicable, après-coup, de façon rationnelle” [the marvelous is thus the result of peripeteia or a coup de théâtre, which untangles the action in an unexpected way that causes surprise, but that is explicable, after the fact, in a rational manner].101 It only appears to be inexplicable, but is in fact so deeply inscribed in the plot that the sequence of events that produced it may be appreciated retrospectively. For Corneille, on the other hand, the marvelous is much closer to Aristotle’s irrational “wonder” (to thaumaston), all the more awe-inspiring in that it is inexplicable.102 More than any other seventeenth-century playwright, Corneille explored the dramatic potential of wonder (“admiration”), substituting it for the tragic emotions of pity and fear in his 1651 tragedy Nicomède. The miraculous conversions of Pauline and Félix belong to the playwright’s reflection on the role of wonder in the theater. Wonder, as R. Darren Gobert has argued, differs categorically from fear and pity in that it fails to unsettle the body: “wonder’s only bodily consequence is the knowledge of the the marvelous thing seen and felt.”103 In other words, the experience of wonder does not entail so strong a physiological [ 117 ]

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response that reason is impaired. Wonder thus enables rather than hampers action. But it is not without its pitfalls. Sévère after all marvels at the conversions of his former lover and her father without himself converting. His experience of wonder stops short of knowledge; or at least stops short of the transcendent knowledge that miracles demand.104 In fact, Sévère’s curiosity (“par curiosité j’ai voulu les connaître”), combined with his desire to know more (“peut-être qu’un jour je les connaitrai mieux”), represents an attitude that is at cross-purposes with the quest for revealed truth. As Corneille writes in the Imitation, the miracles wrought by divine agency may be seen and admired, but not understood (“Que l’homme voit, admire, et ne saurait connaître”).105 Sévère seeks or awaits a rational explanation where none exists. Indeed, Corneille struggles to prove that the conversions fit within the rational order of dramatic narrative, drawing upon the conventionality of miraculous conversions in saints’ lives.106 To claim that conversions are miraculous and therefore beyond the pale of verisimilitude yet to insist that they are “si ordinaires” [so common] within a martyrological context as to be verisimilar places Corneille in a difficult position vis-à-vis his own dramatic theory. In the Trois Discours, Corneille distinguishes between “vraisemblance ordinaire” [ordinary verisimilitude] and “vraisemblance extraordinaire” [extraordinary verisimilitude]: L’ordinaire est une action qui arrive plus souvent, ou du moins assez souvent que sa contraire. L’extraordinaire est une action qui arrive à la vérité moins souvent que sa contraire, mais qui ne laisse pas d’avoir sa possibilité assez aisée, pour n’aller point jusqu’au miracle, ni jusqu’à ces événements singuliers, qui servent de matière aux Tragédies sanglantes par l’appui qu’ils ont de l’Histoire, ou de l’opinion commune . . . , parce qu’ils ne sont pas croyables à moins que d’avoir cet appui. 107 [The ordinary is an action that arrives more frequently, or at least as frequently as its inverse. The extraordinary is an actions that in truth arrives less frequently than its inverse, but is not without a somewhat natural possibility, without going to far as to be miraculous, nor one of those singular events that furnish the material for bloody tragedies by virtue of history or popular belief . . . , because they are not believable without this support.]

Here, extraordinary events exclude miracles, on a par with “singular events,” because they are only believed by virtue of their historicity, which is to say their veracity. In Corneille’s rehashing of Aristotelian prescriptions, historical events, however extraor[ 118 ]

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dinary, are believed by virtue of their historical veracity or their place in popular opinion. As Forestier puts it, “puisque les grands sujets sont d’une nature telle qu’ils outrent la vraisemblance ordinaire, ils ont un besoin absolu, sous peine d’être rejetés comme incroyables par le public, d’une forme quelconque d’authenticité” [since great subjects are of such nature that they exceed ordinary verisimilitude, they absolutely need some kind of authentification, lest they be rejected by the public as unbelievable].108 This explains Corneille’s insistence on “l’appui de l’Histoire ou de l’opinion commune” as a means to authenticate subjects that otherwise lack verisimilitude. Corneille had invoked a similar argument in response to accusations that his Cid contravened the rule of verisimilitude. Yet unlike the historically grounded events of Le Cid, the conversions in Polyeucte have no basis in the saint’s martyrology and consequently lack the authenticating support of history. What makes them acceptable, then, is their “ordinariness” in hagiography more generally. Nevertheless, the conversions of Pauline and Félix are, to borrow Chapelain’s term, appelées de dehors [called from beyond] the text. Both characters attribute their conversion to Polyeucte’s intervention, suggesting if not a deus ex machina then at least a sanctus ex machina. Religious conversions are miraculous not only because they are manifestations of otherworldly agency, but also because they constitute an especially dramatic turn of events which is all the more marvelous because it is irrational. Thus, in calling the conversions of Félix and Pauline “miraculeuses,” Corneille is referring as much to their poetically anomalous status as to the supernatural effects of Polyeucte’s sanctus in machina. On stage, religious conversion is recontextualized in dramatic terms: conversion is not reported, but actually performed. The spectator’s reception of religious conversion depends on the way in which the conversion is framed. As we saw in chapter 3, the dramatization of conversion through acting in Le Véritable saint Genest and L’Illustre Comédien takes place in the absence of any legitimizing authorial voice and in this way resists a neat interpretation, calling into question the authenticity of the actor’s conversion and the dynamics by which the conversion takes place. In Polyeucte, the the presence of Sévère who, as we have seen, embodies the gaze of the spectator, frames the conversions as marvelous without however recognizing their supernatural quality. In this way, he reminds the audience that theater too, has its miracles.

Conclusion

Pauline’s conversion, the rapturous “saint emportement” [holy transport] that Corneille employs to “faire connaître” [make known] Polyeucte’s absent martyrdom, [ 119 ]

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functions indexically, simultaneously obscuring and revealing Polyeucte’s unseen sacrifice. Like the Catholic Eucharist, Pauline undergoes a kind of transubstantiation: this “seconde hostie” [second host] is no longer the obedient, dutiful daughter she had been in the first four acts of Polyeucte, but a rebellious convert to Christianity. Her character, then, is inconsistently inconsistent and it is this break with verisimilitude that renders the conversion doubly miraculous, not only because religious conversion reveals the hand of God but also because, as an ethical change that flouts the Aristotelian standards for character, it reveals the hand of the poet. Félix converts immediately thereafter, completing the Eucharistic analogy by participating, via Pauline, in the communion of saints. The martyr’s absence from the representational field invites a theologically inflected form of representation that shares in sacramental efficaciousness. This seemingly sacramental conclusion, however, falls short of incorporating one character, Sévère, who despite being so “touched” by the spectacle of familial reconciliation that he declares himself a protector of Christians, does not himself convert. In this way, Sévère tempers the zeal occasioned by Polyeucte’s martyrdom and seemingly reminds the audience that what they have just witnessed was, after all, theater. As theater, Polyeucte displays a theologically inflected alternative to the usual means by which seventeenth-century playwrights represented their subjects. Corneille eschews a visual representation, which would have been unthinkable, as well as a discursive recuperation of the unseen sacrifice, which would have been “sterile.” Borrowing his solution to representing Polyeucte’s martyrdom from sacramental theology, Corneille is able to make it known to the spectators while conveying the the apologetic thrust of martyrdom, where “blood is seed.” To be sure, the play’s hagiographical subject matter lent itself to a Eucharistic representational stragedy. As “other Christs,” martyrs embody the central Christian mystery of the Incarnation: their sacrifice reenacts that of Christ. But Polyeucte is not liturgical or even paraliturgical drama and the sacramentality that I have identified is not identical to the sacraments recognized by the church. Rather, sacramentality shapes the way that the play engages with representing what might otherwise be unrepresentable. In other words, Corneille adapts sacramental dynamics to dramatic practice and in so doing offers a compelling alternative to Aristotelian representation.

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CONCLUSION Theater and Theology at the Threshold of Modernity

S

E V E R A L Y E A R S A F T E R the dazzling success of Polyeucte, Corneille again sought inspiration in hagiography with a second “Christian tragedy,” Théodore, vierge et martyre, which appeared on the planks of the Marais during the 1645–1646 season and in print later that same year. The play presents the life and martyrdom of Saints Theodora and Didymus, fourth-century Egyptian martyrs whose legend, absent from the Roman Martyrology, is recounted by Ambrose in a treatise on chastity, On Virgins. For Corneille, the episode constitutes “le plus bel ornement du second Livre des Vierges de S. Ambroise” [the most beautiful ornament of the second book of On Virgins by Saint Ambrose].1 Théodore, a young Christian virgin, refuses to worship pagan deities and is condemned to a house of ill repute until she relents. As she anxiously awaits her punishment, praying for the preservation of her chastity, a Christian soldier named Didyme arrives and, lending her his cloak as a disguise, facilitates her escape. Both are later seized by the authorities and put to death. A typically Cornelian cast of characters rounds out the dramatis personae furnished by Ambrose’s text: Marcelle, a power-hungry wife who announces the Arsinoé of Nicomède (1650); Valens, a feeble and ineffective governor, entirely under the spell of his wife; and Placide, a noble and virtuous son whose only crime is his love for the unyielding Théodore.2 By all appearances, Théodore contained all the ingredients of an engaging and successful play: unrequited love, political ambitions, tension within a noble family, admirable constancy in the face of death, and even the cross-dressed escape of a damsel in distress. Yet Théodore was a flop, removed from the schedule after only five performances. Allegedly, one fatal plot element poisoned the otherwise worthy play: the theme of prostitution. According to D’Aubignac, Théodore “n’a [ 121 ]

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pas eu tout le succès ni toute l’approbation qu’elle méritait” [did not have all the success nor all the appreciation it deserved] because “tout le théâtre tourne sur la prostitution de Théodore” [the entire play turns on the prostitution of Theodore].3 Corneille admitted as much in the prefatory letter of the first edition of the play: “la meilleure partie de mes juges impute ce mauvais succès à l’idée de la prostitution que l’on n’a put souffrir” [the best and most reasonable faction of my judges attribute this unfortunate outcome to the idea of prostitution, which could not be tolerated].4 However, in a move that fainly echoes Antoine Godeau’s celebratory vision of a morally upright stage, Corneille employs his play’s failure to apologetic ends, arguing that “il y a de quoi congratulater à la pureté de notre Théâtre, de voir qu’une histoire qui fait le plus bel ornement du second Livre des Vierges de S. Ambroise, se trouve trop licentieuse pour y être supporté” [there is reason to congratulate the purity of our theater, considering that a story that is the most beautiful ornament of the second book of On Virgins by Saint Ambrose is found too licentious to be tolerated].5 In his 1660 Examen of Théodore, Corneille offers a rather different explanation of the play’s failure. Instead of focusing on the indecorous representation of prostitution, the author takes aim at the virgin martyr herself, arguing that such a character is wholly unsuitable for the stage. [Le caractère] de Théodore est entièrement froide: elle n’a aucune passion qui l’agit; et là même où son zèle pour Dieu, qui occupe toute son âme, devrait éclater le plus . . . , je lui ai donné si peu de chaleur, que cette scène, bien que très courte, ne laisse pas d’ennuyer. Aussi, pour en parler sainement, une vierge et martyre sur un théâtre n’est autre chose qu’un Terme qui n’a ni jambes ni bras, et par consequent point d’action.6 [Théodore’s character is entirely cold: she is not moved by any passion and even when her zeal for God, which fills her soul, should burst forth . . . , I gave her so little warmth that that scene, although very short, does not fail to bore. So, to speak soundly, a virgin and martyr on stage is nothing but a herm that has neither legs nor arms, and consequently no action.]

Here, Corneille takes partial responsibility for Théodore’s failure. He could have given his heroine more “chaleur” [warmth] but didn’t; as a result her character is cold and uninteresting. But then, as if to exculpate himself, Corneille shifts the blame to the character herself, noting that a virgin martyr “sur un théâtre” [on stage] is a stone-cold herm (“Terme”), lacking limbs and consequently agency. A [ 122 ]

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limbless statue, usually of Hermes, the herm traditionally marked boundaries in ancient Greece and developped into a feature of classical architecture, in which case it represents the torso or head of a man or woman supported by a pillar. As such, it serves Corneille as a metaphor for inaction. Théodore is too cooly impassible a character, too passive in her sanctity, that she fails to meet one of tragedy’s basic requirements: action. In the Poetics, Aristotle placed action (praxis) at the heart of tragedy, which is itself “the representation of an action” (mimesis praxeos).7 By asserting that a virgin martyr “on stage” (presumably, the same subject would be acceptable in another literary context) is a defective charater, Corneille appears to concede that saints are ill-suited to the stage and in so doing echoes the critiques of religious and worldly opponents of religious theater alike. Just one year after Corneille published his Examen de Théodore in a revised edition of his complete works, the Jansenist Pierre Nicole claimed in his antitheatrical Traité de la Comédie (1667) that sanctity is wholly at odds with the heroic ethos of tragedy: La silence, la patience, la modération, la sagesse, la pauvreté, la pénitence ne sont pas des vertus dont la représentation puisse divertir des spectateurs; et surtout on n’y entend jamais parler d’humilité, ni de la souffrance des injures. Ce serait un étrange personnage de Comédie qu’un Religieux modeste et silencieux. Il faut quelque chose de grand et d’élevé selon les hommes, et au moins quelque chose de vif et d’animé—ce qui ne se rencontre point dans la gravité et la sagesse chrétiennes. Et c’est pourquoi ceux qui ont voulu introduire des Saints et des Saintes sur le théâtre ont été contraints de les faire paraître orgueilleux, et de leur mettre dans la bouche des discours plus propres à ces héros de l’ancienne Rome, qu’à des Saints et à des Martyrs.8 [Silence, patience, moderation, wisdom, poverty, repentance are not virtues whose representation can entertain spectators; above all, one never hears talk of humility or turning the other cheek. A quiet and modest monastic would be a strange dramatic character. Something grand and elevated, according to men, or at least something lively and animated is necessary—this is not found in Christian gravity and wisdom. This is why those those who wished to introduce saints into the theater were constrained to make them appear prideful and to put into their mouths speeches more suitable for ancient Roman heroes than for saints and martyrs.] [ 123 ]

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The stage, for Nicole, requires worldly (“selon les hommes”) grandeur, energy, liveliness, and action. In the treatise, Nicole criticizes the authors of hagiographical tragedy—Corneille foremost among them—for dressing up pagan or worldly virtues in Christian clothes, turning the saints into spokespeople for decidedly unsaintly values. In a sense, they had no choice: saintly qualities make for poor entertainment. Nicole’s religious critique finds a secular counterpart in SaintEvremond’s essay De la tragédie ancienne et moderne, in which the freethinking writer declares that “l’esprit de notre religion est directement opposé à celui de la tragédie” [the spirit of our religion is directly opposed to that of tragedy].9 Unlike Nicole, Saint-Evremond is less concerned with the theater’s contamination of the cult of the saints than with hagiography’s contamination of the cult of the theater, arguing that religious subjects spol the pleasures of the stage. Despite their divergent religious positions, both writers observe that, as Corneille suggests in the Examen de Théodore, saints do not belong on the stage. In this way, the limbless herm of the Examen recuperates its ancient role as the marker of boundaries, delineating the limits of neoclassical dramatic representation. For many critics, Théodore’s failure at the box office in 1646 signals more generally the failure of Christian drama and the triumph of secular theater in France.10 According to this narrative, the hagiographical theater that exploded on the Parisian stage during the 1640s is, with the notable exception of Corneille’s Polyeucte and Rotrou’s Le Véritable Saint Genest, a curious aberration in the annals of theater history, not especially worthy of study. Yet, as the preceding chapters have shown, the boundaries between church and stage were far from fixed: playwrights, critics, and audiences constantly negotiated the line between faith and verisimilitude, the edifying and brutalizing effect of spectacles, and sacramentality and performance. The separation of church and stage thus appears to be more utopia than reality. For one thing, while Théodore’s failure on the planks of the Marais may have signaled the waning of the Parisian theatergoing public’s enthusiasm for Christian spectacles, hagiographical theater continued to be performed and printed, especially in the provinces. Indeed, dramatic adaptations of the martyrdom of Saint Reine have been performed more or less continuously in the municipality of Alise-Sainte-Reine (Côte-d’Or) since the ninth century and are still performed today. Additionally, hagiographical theater had been performed throughout the seventeenth century in Jesuit colleges, even incorporating the public’s taste for amorous subplots, as the record of performances at Louis-le-Grand clearly shows.11 Finally, sanctity and even martyrdom extended even to ostensibly secular figures: in particular, the actor-cum-martyr figure of Saint Genesius [ 124 ]

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returned in dramatic adaptations of an actor’s final moments, in plays such as Lebeau de Schosne’s L’Apothéose de Molière (1773) or, much later, in performance theory such as Antonin Artaud’s recommendation that actors be like victims signaling through the flames. The limit or “terme” that Théodore’s failure is said to have placed on hagiographical tragedy is thus more ideal than real, theoretical than pragmatic. The “saints,” as it were, of the secular stage—Corneille, Molière, Racine— and the sober, well-regulated, secular, and modern theater they represent in standard literary histories eclipse lesser known playwrights, plays, and practices that challenge the Aristotelian norms by which many critics continue to evaluate seventeenth-century French theater. As a result, we have lost sight of an extensive, theoretically rich, and heterogeneous dramatic corpus that lies beyond the neatly defined boundary of “neoclassical theater.” Or, when we do examine such plays, we seek either to rehabilitate them by demonstrating—often in vain—their conformity with the poetic norms of neoclassical dramaturgy or to consider them as curiosities, interesting insofar as they shed light on a tightly circumscribed time and place, with little bearing on the wider cultural scene. A more generous approach to early modern drama might blur the boundaries between canonical and minor dramatic genres to reveal a more multifarious picture of early modern dramatic theory and practice. As Guy Spielmann has noted, a rigorous adherence to the Aristotelian model of neoclassical theater groups plays according to rigid generic criteria. Spielmann recommends that scholars return to minor, forgotten genres, not to rehabilitate them or isolate them, but rather to formulate new criteria for evaluating theater. “On doit confronter,” he writes, “des oeuvres apparemment diverses, mais dont on a quelque raison de penser qu’elles appartiennent au même genre, pour établir les contours du genre. On s’attachera en particulier aux formes liminaires, qui illustrent justement l’impossibilité de penser la création artistique en catégories mutuellement exclusives.”12 Rather than focus solely on generic or poetic criteria, Spielmann proposes “functional” criteria, such as a play’s ceremonial, entertaining, or didactic function, and allows for considerable overlap in these functions. Following this line of inquiry, whether or not Polyeucte is the only authentic example of religious tragedy because it adapts hagiography to the stage without flouting neoclassical “rules” becomes a moot question. The real question is not what Polyeucte is, but rather what Polyeucte does—and how it does it. Such an approach allows us to cast off rigid generic prejudice and focus instead on the dynamism of early modern dramatic theory and practice.13 [ 125 ]

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That dynamism is, as we have seen, central to early modern French theater. Theater and religion, “the world’s oldest couple,” in the words of Marvin Carlson, interacted in surpising and productive ways, notwithstanding the age-old antitheatrical animus of many ecclesiastics.14 As this book has shown, seventeenth-centry French playwights and critics “thought with saints” as they negotiated the boundary between the sacred and the profane. Far from being an eccentric, minor genre, hagiographical theater reveals itself to be a theoretically rich site to explore the relationship between church and stage, especially as French theater theorists sought to extricate the “modern” stage from its ritual origins. Indeed, the project of modernization itself rested upon religious underpinnings, not the least of which was the emphasis on poetic “faith” and performance “efficacy.” In early modern France, the ostensibly secular, neoclassical theater, itself reformed, thus competes with religious doctrine as a source of both morality and knowledge. This reformation did not entail the rejection of theology, but rather its resolution into a secular vision of the world. All tragedy, then, whether a Horace or a Phèdre, becomes, in Terry Eagleton’s apt phrase, a “secular theodicy,” a way to explain what is otherwise inexplicable, mysterious.15 Moreover, the secularizing project of early modern French theater failed to disenchant completely dramatic genres, theories, and practices. In fact, the “modern” theater imagined by Chapelain, D’Aubignac, and others appears to confirm Giorgio Agamben’s assertion that “[m]odernity, removing God from the world, has . . . failed to leave theology behind.”16 From secular “faith” in the verisimilar events unfolding before the spectator’s eyes to the secular “sacramentality” that underpinned performance’s efficaciousness, early modern dramatic concepts and practices existed in close proximity to—and occasionally overlapped with—theology. Ultimately, the performance of saints and martyrs brings sharply into focus this proximity and allows us to appreciate the productive and dynamic relationship between theater and theology at the threshold of modernity.

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NOTES

Introduction   1. For more on Godeau’s place in seventeenth-century French society, see the excellent articles in Antoine Godeau. De la galanterie à la sainteté, ed. Yves Giraud (Paris: Klincksieck, 1975).  2. Antoine Godeau, Discours sur les ouvrages contenus en ce volume, in Poësies chrestiennes (Paris: Veuve Camusat et Pierre le Petit, 1646), 11.   3. For the political context of the edict, see Déborah Blocker, Instituer un “art.” Politique du théâtre dans la France du premier XVIIe siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009), especially chapter 4.   4. The failure of Corneille’s tragedy Théodore, vierge et martyre (1646). In the 1660 Examen de Théodore, Corneille takes advantage of the play’s failure to illustrate for the purity of the stage: “Ce n’est pas toutefois sans quelque satisfaction que je vois la meilleure et la plus sainte partie de mes juges imputer ce mauvais succès à l’idée de la prostitution qu’on n’a pu souffrir, bien que . . . pour en extenuer l’horreur j’ai employé tout ce que l’art et l’expérience m’ont pu fournir de lumière” [It is not however without some satisfaction that I the best and most reasonable faction of my judges attribute this unfortunate outcome to the idea of prostitution, which could not be tolerated, even though, in order to expunge the horror I employed everything that art and experience had given me as a guide]. Corneille, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), 271.  5. Peter Brook. The Empty Space: A Book About the Theater: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968.)   6. Pierre Pasquier, “L’option martyrologique des dramaturges parisiens de dévotion (1636–1646): heurs et malheurs d’un choix,” Littératures classiques 73 (2010): 169–81.  7. Pierre Corneille, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1980), 975.  8. See Bernard Chédozeau, “Pour une périodisation des rapports entre littérature et religion aux XVIIe siècle,” Littératures classiques 34 (1998), 103–17. Chédozeau attributes the hostile atmosphere to the rise of Augustinian rigorism associated with the Jansensists. The “two cities” paradigm developed by Augustine demarcates two distinct entities: a secular “city of the earth” and a celestial “city of God.” Translated into the field of literature, such a division would discourage the marriage of “earthly” fiction and “divine” truth.  9. Jean-François Senault, Le Monarque ou les devoirs du souverain (Paris: Pierre Le Petit, 1666), 231. 10. Pierre Nicole, Traité de la Comédie, ed. Laurent Thirouin (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1998), 64. [ 127 ]

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11. More recent critics have similarly rejected the possibility of “Christian tragedy” as oxymoronic, but for very different reasons. Laurence Michel, for example, in a 1956 essay argues that “Christianity is intransigent to tragedy,” which “bucks and bulks under” a Christian theology that offers a ready interpretation of “tragic” events. Michel, “The Possibility of Christian Tragedy,” in Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism (Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), 232. This view depends on a philosophical understanding of “the tragic” that, as Georges Forestier has skillfully argued, would be anachronistic in the seventeenth century. See Forestier, Passions tragiques, règles classiques (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 2003), 303–25. 12. Antoine Godeau, Poésies chrestiennes (Paris: Pierre le Petit, 1654), 464. 13. “J’ai bien peur que le raisonnement d’Aristote sur ce point [catharsis] ne soit qu’une belle idée, qui n’ait jamais son effect dans la vérité” [I’m quite afraid that Aristotle’s reasoning on this point is nothing but a nice idea, which never comes to pass in reality]. Corneille, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton, vol. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), 146. 14. Kosta Loukovitch, L’évolution de la tragédie religieuse classique en France (Geneva: Droz, 1933), 85. 15. See Loukovitch, especially pages 135–72 for a discussion of religious tragedy’s evolution. 16. Ibid., 220. 17. J. S. Street, French Sacred Drama from Bèze to Corneille (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 4. 18. One such example is Dipné, Infante d’Irlande (1668), by François d’Avre. See chapter 1. 19. Anne Teulade, Le Saint mis en scène (Paris: Cerf, 2012), 217. 20. Ibid., 196–99. 21. See Candida Moss, The Other Christs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), for an excellent analysis of the construction of a martyrial ideology in the early church. 22. “Martyrdom of Polycarp,” in The Apostolic Fathers, trans. and ed. Bart D. Ehrman, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 392–3. 23. Plato, Republic 600e5 24. 1 Cor 4:16, 1 Cor 11:1, Ephesians 5:11, 1 Thess 2:14 25. Donald R. Kelly, “Martyrs, Myths, and the Massacre: The Background of St. Bartholomew,” American Historical Review, 77 (1972): 1328. 26. Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ 5.4. 27. Hercule Audiffret, Lettres à Philandre (1637–1638), ed. Georges Couton and Yves Giraud (Fribourg: Editions universitaires, 1975), 78. 28. Teulade, Le saint, 215. 29. Simon Ditchfield, “Thinking with Saints: Sanctity and Society in the Early Modern World,” Critical Inquiry 35 (Spring 2009): 571–72. 30. M. D. Chenu, “La littérature comme ‘lieu’ de la théologie,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques (1969) 53 (1): 70–78. Chenu observes that where disciplines meet is fertile ground for both artistic invention and scholarly pursuit: “là où . . . elles se contaminent et se fécondent les unes les autres,” “jouent les puissances d’invention et . . . se font les découvertes” (71). [ 128 ]

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31. Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 21. 32. Street, French Sacred Drama, 188.

Chapter 1   1. “C’est le lieu qui garde aujourd’hui ce nom [du Duc de Bourgogne] où l’on voit sur la porte les marques de cette ancienne Confrérie” [It is the place that today maintains that name [of the Duke of Burgundy] where the marks of that ancient Confraternity are visible on the door]. François Hédelin, abbé d’Aubignac. La Pratique du Théâtre, ed. Hélène Baby (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2011), 450.  2. Luigi Riccoboni, Réflexions historiques et critiques sur les différents théâtres de l’Europe (Paris: Guérin, 1738), 105–7.   3. Jean-Aymar Piganiol la Force, Description historique de la ville de Paris et de ses environs (Paris: Humaire, 1770), 317.   4. Quoting Tertullian’s antitheatrical treatise On Spectacles, Léon expresses his revulsion at those who would attend both the theater and church: “Quelle horreur! ajoûte Tertullien, Quale est de Ecclesia DEI in Ecclesiam Diaboli tendere? Ah! que j’ay horreur de ces Ames profanes . . . qui communient au matin, & l’aprés disné retournent à leurs passions, à leur jeu, à la Comedie” [What horror! adds Tertullian, Quale est in Ecclesia DEI in Ecclesiam Diaboli tendere? Oh! How I am horrified by those profane souls who go to communion in the morning and after dinner return to their passions, to their games, to the theater]. Léon de Saint-Jean, Les Divins paradoxes de l’Eucharistie (Brussels: Jean Mommart, 1663), 184.  5. Léon, Les Triomphes évangéliques (Paris: Denis Thierry, 1665), 563. “C’est comme vouloir faire DIEU Auteur du vice, & protecteur du mensonge. C’est commetre cet abus in[d]igne de Paris, qui tient l’image de la passion de I. CHR. Sur l’Hôtel de Bourgogne: la Croix, sur la porte des Comedies” [It is like wanting to make GOD author of vice and protector of lies. It is like committing that affront unworthy of Paris, that holds the image of the passion of J. CHR. on the Hôtel de Bourgogne: the Cross, on the door of the Comedy]. Léon de Saint-Jean, though largely forgotten today, was an important preacher and theologian in the early seventeenth century. He preached in Paris from 1631 onward, became prédicateur ordinaire du roi in 1650, meaning that he regularly preached Advent and Lent sermon sequences at court. For an introduction to the author, see JeanPierre Messant, “Le carme Léon de Saint Jean,” Ecole des hautes études 69, no. 65 (1956): 101–105.  6. Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 147.   7. Bernard de La Monnoye, Menagiana (Paris: Delaune, 1715), 25.   8. For a full discussion of this anecdote, see Alain Mothu, “Cyranotes,” in Anonymat et clandestinité aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: PUPS, 2000), 189–202.   9. Michal Kobialka, “Introduction,” Of Borders and Thresholds: Theater History, Practice, and Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 5–6. 10. Ibid. [ 129 ]

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11. For an excellent overview of the influence of patristic antitheatrical sentiment in early modern France, see Sylviane Léoni, Le Poison et le remède: théâtre, morale et rhétorique en France et en Italie (1694–1758) (Oxford: Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 1998) and Laurent Thirouin, Aveuglement salutaire: le réquisitoire contre le théâtre dans la France classique (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1997). 12. Georges Couton, Richelieu et le théâtre (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1986) 13. D’Aubignac, La Pratique, 265. Cf. Aristotle, Poetics 1449a10–15. Aristotle writes that tragedy originated in the dithyramb, a hymn sung in honor of Dionysus. 14. Ibid., 449. 15. Ibid., 450. 16. “que le Roi fasse une Déclaration qui porte . . . Que les Jeux du Théâtre n’étant plus un acte de Religion et d’Idolâtre, comme autrefois, mais seulement un divertissement public” [the king issue a declaration that theater performances are no longer an act of religion and idolatry, as in the past, but only a public entertainment]. D’Aubignac, La Pratique, 703–4. 17. Ibid., 453. 18. Ibid., 456. 19. Ibid., 451. 20. Jacques Chocheyras, Le théâtre religieux en Savoie au XVIe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 1971) and Le théâtre religieux en Dauphiné du moyen âge au XVIIIe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 1975). 21. “Théodore, que les troupes de Paris n’y on point rétablie depuis sa disgrâce, mais que cells des provinces y ont fait assez passablement réussir” [Théodore, that the Parisians companies have never reprised since its disgrace, but that those in the provinces have made rather successful]. Pierre Corneille, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), 100. 22. Nicolas Mary Desfontaines, Tragédies hagiographiques, ed. Claude Bourqui and Simone de Reyff (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 2004), 94–95. Louis de Gouvenain, in Le Théâtre à Dijon, also lists, in addition to Saint Eustache, Le Cid, Polyeucte, Endymion, Mariamne, and Jodelet, a list that represents three religious plays (Eustache, Polyeucte, Mariamne), one quasi-religious play (Endymion), and two secular plays. Gouvenain, Le Théâtre à Dijon (Dijon: Eugène Jobard, 1888), 58. 23. http://mysteredesaintereine-alesia.blogspot.fr/ 24. François D’Avre, “A Madame Marie Eleonor de Roham,” in Dipné, infante d’Irlande (Montargis: Bottier, 1668), np. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 90. 27. Ibid. 28. Po-Chia Hsia succinctly explains the popularity of votive images and devotional prints in The World of Catholic Renewal 1540–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 166–67. 29. Claude Ternet, Le Martyre de la glorieuse sainte Reine d’Alize (Chastillon: Bourut, 1680), 71. 30. Ibid., 72. [ 130 ]

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31. For an analysis of the Quarrel, see Marc Fumaroli, Le Sablier renversé (Paris: Gallimard, 2013). Larry Norman, in The Shock of the Ancient (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), offers a compelling reappraisal of the stakes of the Quarrel, arguing that it was in fact the “Ancients” who were the real nonconformists, celebrating the radical alterity of the ancient world. 32. Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, Art poétique, ed. Sylvain Menant (Paris: GF Flammarion, 1969), 100. 33. Ibid., 103. 34. For Boileau on religion, including the sacraments, see Epître XII (“Sur l’amour de Dieu”), Satire XI (“Sur l’honneur”), and Satire XII (“Sur l’équivoque”). It is worth noting that these poems echo a Jansenist skepticism of the Jesuit emphasis on external forms of devotion that, without charity and grace, risk becoming empty signs. 35. Charles de Saint-Evremond, Œuvres, ed. René de Planhol (Paris: A la cité des livres, 1927), 173. 36. Ibid., 175. 37. Ibid. 38. “ce seroit donner un grand avantage aux Libertins, qui pourrait tourner en ridicule à la Comédie les mêmes choses qu’il reçoivent dans les temples avec une apparente soumission” [This would be greatly advantageous to freethinkers, who could ridicule in the theater the same things that they accept in temples with apparent submission], Saint-Evremond, Œuvres, 173. This is remarkably similar to what D’Aubignac writes in “Des discours de piété” [On Pious Speech]: “ont bien de la peine à recevoir ces instructions de la bouche de ceux qui sont préposés pour les faire en la présence des Autels et durant les jours ordonnés pour les apprendre; les esprits un peu libertins s’en raillent quand ils les entendent au Théâtre, et s’endurcissent dans les mauvais sentiments qui les leur font mépriser quand elles leur sont débitées par le Ministère des histrions; Ils regardent la Sainteté dans la Comédie comme un jeu de poésie” [[spectators] have enough trouble accepting these instructions from the mouths of those who are positioned to give them in the presence of altars and on days set aside for learning them; freethinking minds scoff when they hear them in the theater and persist in the evil intentions that lead them to disregard such instructions when they are uttered through the ministry of mountebanks; they view sanctity on stage as a performance of poetry], D’Aubignac, La Pratique, 454. Yoking freethinking and theater was not uncommon. Jean Baudoin (1590–1650), for example, in a “Advis aux libertins” [Warning to Libertines] that followed his portrait of Saint Genesius, addresses the “âmes incredules & vaines, qui tournez en jeu ce qu’il y a de plus serieux dans la Religion” [incredulous and vain souls who turn Religion’s most serious matter into a game]. Baudoin, Les Sainctes Metamorphoses (Paris: Moreau, 1643), 152. 39. Saint-Evremond, Œuvres, 175. 40. For more on Saint-Evremond, see Quentin Hope, Saint-Evremond and His Friends (Geneva: Droz, 1999). 41. D’Aubignac, La Pratique, 454. 42. Puget de la Serre, Le Martyre de Sainte Caterine (Paris: Antoine de Sommaville and Augustin Courbé, 1643), np. 43. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 975. 44. Jean Chapelain, Opuscules critiques, ed. Alfred C. Hunter (Geneva: Droz), 196. [ 131 ]

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45. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 975. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid., 976. 48. Ibid., 977. 49. “Mon Polyeucte touche à son heure dernière; / Pour achever de vivre il n’a plus qu’un moment; Vous en êtes la cause, encor qu’innocemment.” Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 1034. 50. Ibid., 975. Emphasis mine. 51. Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (Routledge, 2008) 52. D’Aubignac, La Pratique, 451. 53. Ibid., 457. Emphasis mine. 54. Georges de Scudéry, “Observations sur le Cid,” in Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 782. 55. Faith Beasley, Salons, History, and the Creation of Seventeenth-Century France (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 102–14. 56. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 782. 57. Balzac, “Discours sur une tragédie de M. Heinsius intitulée Herodes infanticida,” in Œuvres (Paris: Jolly, 1665), 535. 58. Chapelain, Opuscules, 196. 59. For an overview of the evolution of this and other terms related to belief, see Jean Wirth, “La naissance du concept de croyance (XIIe-XVIIe siècles),” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 45 (1983): 7–58. 60. Antoine Furetière, Dictionnaire universel (The Hague: Arnoud and Reinier Leers, 1701), 957. 61. Ibid. 62. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Stephen Halliwell (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1987), 40–41. 63. D’Aubignac, La Pratique, 114. 64. For a thorough analysis of the internal coherence of fiction according to Aristotle, see Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 151–76. Halliwell argues that a work of art according to Aristotle must always be evaluated according to its own terms and so the moralizing interpretation of Aristotle that prevailed in the early modern period is not authorized by the text of the Poetics. 65. Chapelain, Opuscules, 198. 66. Michael Allen Gillespie has argued, in The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), that the rise of nominalism in the fourteenth century ushered in a view of the divine as utterly incomprehensible and unpredictable, which in turn fostered the development of secular institutions. While he is concerned primarily with political institutions, it is possible to see Chapelain’s view of literary creation as distinct from Creation as another iteration of a “nominalist” modernity. See especially chapter 3, “Humanism and the Apotheosis of Man,” pages 69–100. 67. Anne Duprat, Vraisemblances: Poétiques et théorie de la fiction du Cinquecento à Jean Chapelain (1500–1670) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009), 31. [ 132 ]

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68. See, for example, Giorgio Agamben, The Kingdom and the Glory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), Jane Bennet, The Enchantment of Modern Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), and Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), and On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). 69. Chapelain, Opuscules, 196–97. 70. “Créance” in modern French means “debt” or “claim.” In the seventeenth century, the word was much closer in meaning to its etymon, the Latin verb credere or “to believe.” As such, it was nearly synonymous with “croyance” (“belief ”). Furetière gives the definition “opinion, sentiment, faith” (“opinion, sentiment, foi”) and directs the reader to the entry for “croyance.” On the other hand, Alfred C. Hunter, in Lexique de la langue de Jean Chapelain, gives as the primary definition “confiance” (“confidence, trust”). He also cites the Littré’s definition of “ajouter foi” (“to give faith”). Yet he seems to take issue with the examples given in the Littré, which come primarily from religious or philosophical texts (e.g., Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Descartes). Hunter, Lexique de la langue de Jean Chapelain (Geneva: Droz, 1967), 55. 71. Wirth, “La naissance,” 53. 72. Duprat, Vraisemblances, 313. 73. It should be noted that Coleridge used the expression “poetic faith” to compare between religious faith and the “faith” one might have in a fictional world. With respect to Chapelain, I use “poetic faith” to describe a mode of belief that is distinct from religious faith. 74. Dennis Kennedy, The Spectator and the Spectacle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 214–15. 75. Duprat, Vraisemblances, 337. 76. Corneille, Oevures, vol. 1, 979. 77. Ibid. 78. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2a2ae.84, 94, and 103. 79. For a fascinating account of the impetus for the Bollandists’ project, see Jan Machielsen, “Heretical Saints and Textual Discernment: The Polemical Origins of the Acta Sanctorum (1643–940),” in Angels of Light? Sanctity and the Discernment of Spirits in the Early Modern Period (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 103–41. 80. Simon Ditchfield, “Thinking with Saints: Sanctity and Society in the Early Modern World,” Critical Inquiry 35 (Spring 2009): 571–72. 81. Corneille’s ecclesiastic sources include Paul the Deacon (ca. 720–799) and Caesar Baronius (1538–1607). 82. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 976. 83. Quoted in Machielsen, “Heretical Saints,” 111. 84. Aristotle, Rhetoric, trans. W. Rhys Roberts (New York: Random House, 1984), 152. 85. That implausibility should be the mark of the real is as much a concern for narrative fiction as it is for dramatic fiction. The princess’s confession in Madame de Lafayette’s 1678 novel La Princesse de Clèves would rankle some in the literary establishment of the time, who held that a married woman [ 133 ]

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 might tell her husband she is in love with another man in real life, but that such an indiscretion flies in the face of the verisimilitude and decorum that ought to govern fictional life.  86. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Halliwell, 60. Halliwell smooths over two different terms in Greek (eikota, “likely” and apithana, “unconvincing”) to make the opposition clearer. Corneille, in the Trois discours sur le poème dramatique, glosses these terms as “impossible croyable” and “possible incroyable,” Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 3, 169. The difference between the two terms in the original Greek is not critical to understand the overall meaning of the passage, but it does shed some light on the nature of fiction as imaginative, eikota being related to those things that fall within the realm of imagination.  87. Aristotle, Poetics 1451b30–32.   88. Jacques Rancière, “S’il y a de l’irreprésentable?” in Le destin des images (Paris: La Fabrique, 2003)   89. While it may seem incongruous to bring a third-century church father into a discussion of early modern poetics, it is worth noting that Tertullian was widely read and translated in seventeenthcentury France. Henri-Jean Martin observes that Tertullian was the most frequently published and reedited of the church fathers. Henri-Jean Martin, Livres, pouvoirs et société à Paris au XVIIe siècle (1598–1701), vol. 1 (Geneva: Droz, 1999), 111. Further, we know that Nicolas Rigault (1577–1654), who edited the works of Tertullian among other Church Fathers, was friends with both Jean Chapelain and Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac. Chapelain’s library included numerous theological works, including treatises by Tertullian. Colbert Searles, ed. Catalogue de tous les livres de feu M. Chapelain (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1912), 18–24.   90. Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ 5.4.   91. James Moffat, “Tertullian and Aristotle,” Journal of Theological Studies 17 (1916): 170–71.   92. For a full discussion of Tertullian’s paradox within its historical context, see Jean-Claude Fredouille, Tertullien et la conversion de la culture antique (Paris: Institut d’Etudes Augustiniennes, 2012), 326–37 and Eric Osborn, Tertullian, First Theologian of the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 48–64.   93. Moffat was the first to call attention to the “curious affinity between Tertullian’s famous paradox and a passage in the Rhetoric.” Moffat, “Aristotle and Tertullian,” 170.  94. Jean-François Senault, Panégyriques des saints, vol. 2 (Paris: Pierre le Petit, 1658), 355.   95. Georges Didi-Huberman, “La couleur de la chair ou le paradoxe de Tertullien,” Nouvelle Revue de psychanalyse 35 (1987): 9–49.  96. Emile Mâle, Religious Art: From the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century (New York: Harper, 1958), 179. Quoted in Ditchfield, “Thinking with Saints,” 563.   97. See Joseph Bergin, Church, Society, and Religious Change in France 1580–1730 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 229–42.   98. For a critical reevaluation of this designation, see Sophie Houdard, “Le grand siècle ou le siècle des saints: une fausse perspective,” Littératures Classiques 76 (2011): 147–54.   99. Cary Howie, “All Saints,” L’Esprit Créateur 50 (2010): 2–3. 100. Ditchfield, “Thinking with Saints,” 564.

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Chapter 2   1. “Martyr and witness are the same thing” [Martyr et témoin, c’est la même chose] wrote Bossuet in his Panégyrique de saint Gorgon (ca. 1649). Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Œuvres, eds. Bernard Velat and Yvonne Champailler (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), 231.   2. Ibid., 371. Bossuet vividly describes how Victor was attached to a wrack and beaten, dragged through the street by a wild horse, leaving not only blood but strips of his flesh (“des lambeaux de sa chair”) on the paving stones, before finally being crushed by a millstone.   3. Bossuet exhorts his audience not to rest their eyes on Victor’s torments: je vous demande, mes Frères, que vous n’arrêtiez pas seulement la vue sur tant de peines qu’il a endurées, mais que . . . vous vous mettiez vous-mêmes à l’épreuve touchant l’amour de la croix, qui est la marque essentielle du chrétien” [Brothers, I ask you not to rest your eyes on the sight of so many punishments that he endures, but to put yourself to the test concerning the love of the Cross, which is the essential mark of a Christian]. Bossuet, Œuvres, 385. Considering that Bossuet’s audience was made up of Augustinian clerics, it is easy to imagine how much more risky his enterprise would have been, had he recounted Victor’s martyrdom before a secular, worldly audience!   4. Elizabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 114. See also pages 106–21 for more on the “paradoxical relationship between Christian polemics against the spectacle and Christian appropriations of the spectacle when linked to the realm of persecution and martyrdom” in Late Antiquity. For more on spectacula christiana and the influence of Tertullian’s anitheatrical treatise on medieval drama, see Norman Davis, “Spectacula Christiana: A Roman Christian Template for Medieval Drama,” Medieval English Theater 9 (1987): 125–52. On Tertullian’s opposition to the stage, see Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 44–51. Barish also notes how the theater and its games represented, for Augustine, a diabolical counterpart to the church and its rites.  5. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 106.  6. The expression concupiscentia oculorum appears in Augustine’s Confessions 10.35. See also Augustine’s Sermon 313a for more on the deleterious effects of spectation.  7. Omne enim spectaculum sine concussione spiritus non est [There is no public spectacle without violence to the spirit]. Tertullian, On Spectacles, trans. T. R. Glover (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 269–70.  8. Vis et pugilatus et luctatus? Praesto sunt, non parva et multa. Aspice impudicitiam deiectam a casitate, perfidiam caesam a fide, saevitiam a misericordia contusam, petulantiuam a modestia adumbratam, et tales sunt apud nos agones in quibus ipsi coronamur. Vis autem et sanguis aliquid? Habes Christi [Would you have fightings and wrestlings? Here they are—things of no small account and plenty of them. See impurity overthrown by chastity, perfidy slain by faith, cruelty crushed by pity, impudence thrown into the shade by modesty; and such are the contests among us, and in them we are crowned. Have you a mind for blood? You have the blood of Christ]. Tertullian, On Spectacles, 296.  9. Ibid., 297. 10. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 118.

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11. Tertullian, On Spectacles, 299. 12. In the preceding chapter, Tertullian describes Christian entertainment, including spectacles, as nec fabulae, sed veritates [truth rather than fable]. Tertullian, On Spectacles, 296. 13. Whether the saints delight in the suffering of the damned is a theological problem. For Aquinas, the pleasure lies not in watching the suffering per se, but rather in the saints’ own beatitude, which is brought into relief by the spectacle of the suffering. He concludes that it is to boost the saints’ happiness that they see the suffering of the damned. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Suppl.3ae.94.2. 14. Bossuet, Maximes et Réflexions sur la comédie (Paris: Jean Anisson, 1694), 150. 15. Bossuet, Œuvres, 390. Bossuet’s language (“cet exemple . . . nous regarde”) is remarkably similar to that of Pascal who, in the Pensées, constrasts the exemplary suffering of pagan heroes with that of martyrs. As “nos membres” [our members], that is, in the mystical body of the Church, the martyrs are capable of touching us in a way that others cannot. 16. Matt. 20:23. 17. Simon Ditchfield, “Thinking with Saints: Sanctity and Society in the Early Modern World,” Critical Inquiry 35 (2009): 576. For more on the cult of the saints, see Joseph Bergin on processions and pilgrimages in Church, Society, and Religious Change in France 1580–1730 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 242–51. 18. I borrow the term prurient gaze from David Frankfurter, who offers an excellent analysis of the deployment of sado-erotic violence in early martyrological narrative. Frankfurter, “Martyrology and the Prurient Gaze,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 17, no. 2 (2009): 215–45. See also William Burgwinkle and Cary Howie, Sanctity and Pornography in Medieval Culture: On the Verge (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011) for another approach to the erotics of martyrdom. Burgwinkle and Howie provocatively argue that sanctity and pornography resemble one another not only because their visual dynamics (e.g., the upturned eyes of ecstasy) are similar, but also because they both invite the vicarious participation of the viewer. 19. Alice Dailey, The English Martyr: From Reformation to Revolution (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), 250. 20. Minucius Felix, Octavius, trans. Gerald H. Rendall (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 427. 21. Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 21. 22. Poetics 1452b10–13. Trans. Halliwell, 43. 23. “On a déjà parlé du coup de théâtre et de la reconnaissance; quant à l’effet violent [pathos], c’est une action causant destruction ou douleur, par exemple les meutres accomplis sur scène, les grandes douleurs, les blessures et toutes choses du même genre.” Aristotle, La Poétique, trans. Roselyne Dupont-Roc and Jean Lallot (Paris: Seuil, 1980), 73. 24. Ibid., 234. 25. Poetics 1450b17–20. 26. Rhetoric 1410b33–34. [ 136 ]

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27. For the context of early seventeenth-century stage violence, see Christian Biet, Théâtre de la cruauté et récits sanglants en France (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2006) as well as Biet, “Naissance sur l’échafaud: ou la tragédie du début du XVIIe siècle,” Intermédialités no. 1 (2003):75–105. For an account of stage violence that locates its origins in the rhetorical treatises of antiquity, see Jody Enders, Rhetoric and the Origins of Medieval Drama (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992). 28. Boissin de Gallardon, Tragédies et histoires sainctes (Lyon: S. Rigaud, 1618), 293. 29. Ibid., 331. 30. Ibid., 332. 31. 1450b17–20. Trans. Halliwell, 38–39. 32. For an analysis of Aristotle’s preference for plot over spectacle, see Florence Dupont, Aristote ou le vampire du théâtre occidental (Paris: Aubier, 2007). Dupont argues that Aristotle “detheatricalizes” (“déthéatralise”) the theater by evacuating the elements associated with performance (actors, scenery, etc.). While Dupont’s analysis has the merit of demonstrating that “Aristotelian tragedy” is a pure abstraction or theoretical utopia that had little in common with actual dramatic practice, it perhaps overstates Aristotle’s denigration of spectacle. In Poetics 1450b17–20 Aristotle does not write that tragedy cannot or must not involve spectacle, but rather that the art of stagecraft belongs to the “mask-maker,” not the poet. In other words, although Aristotle holds that the text alone should be sufficient to produce an emotional effect and in so doing renders spectacle superfluous, there is nothing to suggest that spectacle may not complement the text, in which case it falls to the “mask-maker,” not the poet, to devise the scenery, etc. 33. Poetics 1453b1–8, Trans. Halliwell, 45. 34. La Mesnardière, La Poétique (Paris: Antoine de Sommaville, 1639), 12. 35. Ibid., 212. 36. Ibid., 200. 37. Ibid., 201. 38. John D. Lyons, Kingdom of Disorder: The Theory of Tragedy in Classical France (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1999), 54. 39. Hélène Merlin-Kajman, L’absolutisme dans les lettres et la théorie des deux corps: passions et politique (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2000), 117. 40. La Mesnardière, La Poétique, 33. 41. Pierre Corneille, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton, vol. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), 116. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Brad Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 305. 45. Jean Baudoin, Les Saintes Métamorphoses (Paris: Moreau, 1643), 87–94. 46. Acta sanctorum, September 20. http://acta.chadwyck.co.uk/all/fulltext?ALL=Y&ACTION=byid &warn=N&div=4&id=Z400016868&FILE=../session/1436315989_10736&SOURCE=config .cfg&CURDB=acta. [ 137 ]

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47. See J. S. Street, French Sacred Drama from Bèze to Corneille (Cambrdige: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 321–22, for a discussion the play’s dates. The editors of Baro’s complete dramatic works note that the play enjoyed a certain success in print, with several editions through the 1670s. See Balthasar Baro, Théâtre complet, eds. Pierre Escudé, Pierre Pasquier, Anne Teulade, and Noémie Courtès (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014), 146–47. 48. For more on dating Desfontaines’s play, see Georges Forestier, “Le Véritable saint Genest de Rotrou: enquête sur l’élaboration d’une tragédie chrétienne,” XVIIe siècle 179 (1993): 307. See also Desfontaines, Tragédies hagiographiques, ed. Claude Bourqui and Simone de Reyff (Paris: Sociéte des Textes Modernes Français, 2004), 94–95. All references to Desfontaines’s theater are taken from this edition. 49. Desfontaines, Tragédies hagiographiques, 545–57. 50. See Claude Bourqui’s fascinating hypothesis that Desfontaines may have influenced Molière in “Molière, interprète des tragédies hagiographiques?” Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 101 (2001): 21–35. 51. René de Cériziers, Les eloges sacrez ou la vie des saints, vol. 9 (Paris: Charles Angot, 1661), 200. 52. Ibid. Amadis de Gaula was an influential Spanish chivalric romance that gave rise to dozens of sequels, translations, and imitations. In 1684 Lully composed an opera based on the story. 53. Ibid. 54. The palm tree’s resilience—bending but not breaking—is associated with victory in emblembooks, often with the accompanying motto obdurandum adversus urgentia or “stand firm against oppresion.” The crown of martyrdom has Biblical basis: see James 1:12–16 and Revelation 2:10. In both passages, the expression is “crown of life” (coronam vitae in the Vulgate), and designates the martyr’s reward (eternal life) for withstanding persecution. 55. For an anlysis of the incorporation of music into provincial religious tragedies, see Bénédicte Louvat-Molozay, Théâtre et musique: Dramaturgie de l’insertion musicale dans le théâtre français (1550–1680) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002), 479–96. 56. Pierre Pasquier, “L’option martyrologique des dramaturges parisiens de dévotion (1636–1646): heurs et malheurs d’un choix.” Littératures classiques 73 (2010): 169–81. 57. Desfontaines, Tragédies, 213. The image of the martyrs being reduced to cinders and scattered to the wind translates, in a different register, Tertullian’s famous claim that the “blood of the martyrs is the seed” of the church. Cf. Agrippa D’Aubigné, who wrote in his Tragiques (1616), that the ashes of Protestant martyrs, far from disappearing into the wind, carried the faith far and wide like so many seeds: “Les cendres des bruslez sont precieuses graines / Qui, apres les hyvers noirs d’orage et de pleurs / Ouvrent au doux printemps d’un million de fleurs / Le baume salutaire, et sont nouvelles plantes / Au milieu des parvis de Sion fleurissantes” (“La Chambre dorée,” ll.654–57). 58. Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings, trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 320–21. 59. Lucian of Samosata, The Works of Lucian vol. I, trans. A. M. Harmon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1913), 17. For other accounts of the brazen bull, see Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 9.18–19 and Polybius, The Histories 12.25. [ 138 ]

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60. The treatise, an inventory of instruments of torture, featured illustrations by the celebrated painter and engraver Antonio Tempesta (1555–1630). 61. Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701), for example, recalls the bull’s transformation of human suffering into bestial lowing in her heroic novel Clélie: “this Brazen Bull, which a man named Perillaus had constructed so that those whom the Tyrant wanted to kill could be put inside, and that, when a great fire would be built around it, which burned them in the most cruel way imaginable, their voices would resemble lowing, and would touch the people less” [ce Taureau d’Airain, qu’un homme appelé Perille avait fait, afin qu’on y enfermât ceux que ce Tyran voudrait faire mourir; & que lors qu’on ferait un grand feu tout à l’entour, qui les brûlerait de la plus cruelle manière du monde, les voix qu’ils prononceraient ressemblassent à des mugissements, & attendrissent moins le Peuple qui les entendait]. Madeleine de Scudéry, Clélie, histoire romaine, ed. Chantal MorlatChantalat, vol. 2 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002), 243–44. 62. Jean-Jacques Boissard, Emblematum liber (Frankfurt: Theodor de Bry, 1593), 58. 63. Pierre Le Moyne, L’art des devises (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1666), 513. The motto is taken from book seven of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where Aeacus describes the plague at Aegina. 64. Desfontaines, Tragédies, 214. 65. Ibid., 216. It is worth noting that Adrian does not recognize the legitimacy of Eustache’s God. The gods, he laments, are ungrateful for all he has done for them, including having Eustache and his family executed. 66. Ibid., 216. 67. Ibid., 21–24. 68. Eustathius allegedly lived during the reigns of Trajan (98–117 CE) and Hadrian (117–138 CE). Desfontaines’s play reflects this. Moreover, it develops a meditation on the impermanence of temporal power that prefigures Adrian’s final scene of remorse. “Enfin, Trajan est mort, cet Illustre Empereur / N’est plus dorénavant qu’un spectacle d’horreur, . . . / Il a fallu descendre en dépit de l’orgueil, De la pourpre à la terre, et du trône au cercueil” [At last, Trajan is dead, this illustrious emperor / Is no longer but a spectacle of horror, . . . Despite his pride he had to descend, / from the purple to earth, and from the throne to the grave]. Desfontaines, Tragédies, 188–89. 69. Ibid., 133–34. 70. Ibid. 71. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 34. 72. John T. Hamilton, “Torture as an Instrument of Music,” in Thresholds of Listening, ed. Sander Van Maas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 152. 73. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 1020. 74. The martyrial logic here is not unlike that of performance, which, as Peggy Phelan put it, lives only in the present: “Performance’s only life is in the present. . . . Performance’s being, like the ontology of subjectivity proposed here, becomes itself through disappearance.” Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 2003), 146. For a fascinating meditation on this axiom in the context of early modern theater, see Ellen MacKay, Persecution, Plague, and Fire: Fugitive Histories of the Stage in Early Modern England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [ 139 ]

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2011). This may be compared with the frequently encountered anecdote of the actor consumed (literally) by his role: Mondory, Monfleury, Molière and, the subject of the following chapter, Genesius. 75. Gregory, Salvation at Stake, 132. 76. The brazen bull was in fact a Stoic commonplace used to illustrate the wise man’s freedom from pain and suffering: the sage can remain happy even within the belly of Phalaris’s bull. See Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 2.7.17. Early Christians seized on this trope of pagan virtue, but only to demonstrate its speciousness. 77. François de Sales, Œuvres, ed. André Ravier (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 34. Emphasis mine. 78. Desfontaines, Tragédies, 217–18. 79. The Italian architect and stage designer Niccolò Sabbatini (1574–1654) explained the construction and deployment of flying machines in chapter 44 of his Pratica di fabricar scene e machine ne teatri (1638), “Come si possa fare calare une nuvola sopra il palco dal cielo per dritto, con persone dentro.” His work was carried on, in France, by fellow Italian Giacomo Torelli (1608–1678), who is perhaps best known for his work on Corneille’s Andromède (1650). For more on flying machines, see John A. McKinven, Stage Flying: 432 BC to Modern Times (Glenwood, IL: Meyerbooks, 1995), 25–1. 80. Louvat-Molozay, Théâtre et musique, 494. 81. 1460a11–17, Trans. Halliwell, 60. 82. Ibid., 176. 83. Desfontaines, Tragédies, 217. 84. Ditchfield, “Thinking with Saints,” 564. 85. Louvat-Molozay, Théâtre et musique, 503. 86. Aristotle, Poetics 1448b9–11 87. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) 88. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 201. 89. Translating religious ecstasy or rapture by a spectacular break with narrative suggests an affinity between Le Martyre de saint Eustache and early opera. Etienne Gros’s 1928 article on the evolution of the French tragédie lyrique acknowledges the role of religious theater (among many other types of drama) in the development of opera. Considering a constellation of genres, Gros’s article implies that spectacular, lyrical, non-Aristotelian plays existed alongside and even within genres long considered Aristotelian. Etienne Gros, “Les origines de la tragédie lyrique et la place des tragédies en machines dans l’évolution du théâtre vers l’opéra,” Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France 35 (1928): 161–93.

Chapter 3 1. “Passio s. Genesii mimi et martyris Romae sub Diocletiano, auctore anonymo,” in Acta sanctorum, August 25. http://acta.chadwyck.com/all/fulltext?ALL=Y&ACTION=byid&warn=N&div=4&id [ 140 ]

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 =Z400023288&FILE=../session/1436272831_15932&SOURCE=config.cfg&CURDB=acta (accessed July 1, 2016).  2. Ibid.  3. Genesius is not the only such case. Sylvanus (May 15), Porphyrus (September 15), Ardalion (April 14), and Pelagia (May 4) are other instances of converted actors. Very little biographical information exists for some of these saints, who may be entirely legendary (e.g., Ardalion). They nevertheless bear witness to the popularity of the converted actor trope. The Florentine actor and playwright Giambattista Andreini (1576–1654), who was active in Paris, composed a series of sonnets on the subject of converted actors intended to glorify the stage, titled Teatro Celeste. The collection was dedicated to Richelieu and published in 1624. For more on converted actors, both legendary and historical, see André Villiers, Le Cloître et la scène (Paris: Nizet, 1961).  4. Jean-Pierre Camus, Leçons exemplaires (Paris: Bertault, 1632), 461–78.   5. Saint Cecilia, a second-century virgin martyr, was a popular saint. Patroness of musicians, her feast was celebrated on November 22. Her life furnished at least two martyr-plays in the seventeenth century: Nicolas Soret’s La Céciliade (1606) and Sainte Cécile couronnée (1662), by the preacher Jean François de Nîmes.  6. Léon de Saint-Jean, “Sermon pour le dernier dimanche de l’Avent,” in L’année royale, semons prechez devant Leurs Majestez Tres-Chrétiennes (Paris: Jacques Quesnel, 1658), 601. Viewing extraordinary conversions as Christian “metamorphoses” (in contrast to Ovid’s popular text) was not uncommon in early modern France. Léon also composed Les Métamorphoses sacrées, naturelles, morales, divines (Grenoble: André Galle, 1665), a series of sermons on miraculous change (e.g., “le limon changé au corps de l’homme” [clay changed into a man’s body]). Similarly, Jean Baudoin (1590–1650) published a devotional book called Les saintes métamorphoses ou changemens miraculeux de quelques grands Saints (Paris: Moreau, 1643).  7. Jean-François Senault, L’homme chrestien, ou la reparation de la nature par la grace (Paris: Pierre Le Petit, 1655), 848.   8. “que fait un acteur, lorsqu’il veut jouer naturellement une passion, que de rappeler autant qu’il peut celles qu’il a ressenties, et que, s’il était chrétien, il aurait tellement noyées dans les larmes de la pénitence, qu’elles ne reviendraient jamais à son esprit, ou n’y reviendraient qu’avec horreur [What does an actor do, when he wants to portray a passion naturally, but recall as well as he can those that he had experienced and which, were he a Christian, he would have so drowned in penitential tears that they would never return to his mind, or would return only with horror]? Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Maximes et réflexions sur la comédie (Paris: Jean Anisson, 1694), 15.   9. Georges de Scudéry, L’Apologie du théâtre (Paris: Augustin Courbé, 1639), 83–84. 10. Samuel Chappuzeau, Théâtre françois, ed. C. J. Gossip (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2009), 153. 11. 1 Corinthians 4:9. 12. For a discussion of 1 Cor 4:9 in the context of early Christian antitheatrical polemics, see Elizabeth Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 117–22. 13. Georges Forestier, Le théâtre dans le théâtre sur la scène française du XVIIe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 1981), 205. [ 141 ]

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14. John D. Lyons, “Saint Genest and the Uncertainty of Baroque Theatrical Experience,” Modern Language Notes 109, no. 4 (1994): 601–16 15. Anticipating Diderot’s Paradoxe sur le comédien (composed in the 1770s, published in 1830) by more than a century, Rotrou’s tragedy problematizes the relationship between the actor and his role. Indeed, Sainte-Beuve opens his discussion of Le Véritable saint Genest by alluding to the eighteenth-century debate about the nature of acting: “c’était de savoir si l’acteur, le bon et grand acteur, quand il joue, doit s’éprendre de son rôle au point d’en être sérieusement, entièrement ému et entraîné, ou s’il doit, tout en s’y livrant, le dominer par un sang-froid intérieur et le juger” [it was to know whether the actor, the good and great actor, when he performs, must be taken with his role to the point of seriously becoming it, totally moved and carried away, or whether, while giving himself to it, he must control it with interior sang-froid and judgment]. Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, vol. 1 (Paris: Hachette, 1888), 147–48. 16. One could argue that an ethical imperative comes into play here. Real (versus feigned) suffering ought to be alleviated. This is the crux of Augustine’s famous condemnation of tragic pleasure in book three of the Confessions, which frames the question of pleasure as a moral problem. We are obliged to alleviate real suffering, but fictional representations of suffering allow us to indulge in the feeling of pity or compassion gratuitously, that is, without the moral obligation to come to the aid of the suffering person (since, of course, he or she is fictional). 17. Anne Dillon, The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community, 1535–1603 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002), 56. 18. Donald R. Kelly, “Martyrs, Myths, and the Massacre: The Background of St. Bartholomew,” American Historical Review, 77 (1972), 1328. 19. Blaise Pascal, Pensées (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1962), 178. 20. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, ed. H. J. Schroeder (Rockville, IL: Tan Books, 2005), 52. 21. Senault, L’homme chrestien, 848. 22. Anthony Kubiak, “Virtual Faith,” Theatre Survey 47.2 (2006): 271–76. 23. Ibid., 72. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. Denis Guénoun has persuasively argued that theater is characterized by ontological deficiency in Actions et acteurs (Paris: Belin, 2005). He further argues that this deficiency undergirds antitheatrical polemics: the spectacle is evil not necessarily because it arouses negative passions or sets bad examples, but simply because it is a “jouissance de rien.” See especially pages 173–87. 27. Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, “Les Trois Grâces du comédien: Théatre, politique et théologie dans Le Véritable Saint Genest,” The French Review 61.5 (1988): 703–14. 28. Forestier, Le théâtre dans le théâtre, 202. 29. Adrian or Hadrian of Nicomedia (September 8), a member of the Maximian’s imperial guard who converted while torturing a group of Christians, whereupon he was imprisoned and executed. The Jesuit Louis Cellot (1588–1658), the same Cellot who condemned the professional stage in his [ 142 ]

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Orationes, composed a neo-Latin tragedy on the life of Adrian, Sanctus Adrianus martyr (1634), from which Rotrou borrowed a substantial number of lines. 30. Shortly before the end of the tragedy, the emperor has a vision of Genest and Pamphilie in the sky, surrounded by “mille beaux objets” [a thousand beautiful objects] and holding palm fronds. Curiously, however, the triumphant vision is devoid of apologetic force. Rather than convert, the emperor deifies the martyred Christians: “I will place you among our gods” [Je vous vais ranger au nombre de nos dieux]. Jean Puget de la Serre’s Le Martyre de Sainte Caterine (Paris: Antoine de Sommaville, 1642) ends on a similar note. “Je vais vous élever d’illustres mausolées / Qui toucheront du faîte aux voûtes étoilées, / Et serviront de marque aux siècles à venir, / Et de votre innocence, et de mon repentir” [I will erect for you magnificent mausoleums / That will reach the heavens, / And will remind the generations to come, / Of your innocence and my repentance]. The emperor is sorry for having killed Catherine, but there is no indication that he has converted. Lactantius’s treatise On the Deaths of the Persecutors would not be discovered until the end of the seventeenth century, when Etienne Baluze (1630–1718) issued his edition in 1679. Nevertheless, the torment of the persecutors (here, psychological torment) had become a common theme in Christian historiography. 31. Pierre Pasquier, “Introduction,” in Rotrou, Théâtre complèt, vol. 4 (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 2001), 206. All references will be to this edition. 32. François Bonfils and Emmanuelle Hénin (eds.), “Dossier” in Rotrou, Le véritable Saint Genest (Paris: Flammarion, 1999), 146. 33. René Pintard, Le libertinage érudit dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Boivin, 1943), 62. 34. Furetière, Dictionnaire universel (The Hague: Arnoud and Reiner Leers, 1701), 204. 35. See Marc Fumaroli, “La Querelle de la moralité du théâtre avant Nicole et Bossuet” Revue d’histoire littéraire de France 5-6 (1970): 1007–30. 36. Marc Fumaroli, Héros et orateurs: rhétorique et dramaturgie cornéliennes (Geneva: Droz, 1990), 462–85. Though it is not especially well known today, Fumaroli considers this treatise essential to the early debate about the morality of theater. 37. See Jean Dubu’s Les églises chrétiennes et le théâtre (1550–1850) (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1997), 71–93. 38. Henry Phillips, The Theatre and Its Critics in Seventeenth-Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 221. 39. Pierre Du Ryer, preface to Saül (Paris: Antoine de Sommaville and Augustin Courbé, 1642), np. 40. Balthasar Baro, “Advertissement” of Célinde (Paris: François Pomeray, 1629), 5. 41. Marquise de Sablé, Maximes, in La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales (Lausanne: Bousquet, 1760), 161–62. 42. Pierre de Villiers, Entretien sur les tragédies de ce temps (1675), in Jean Racine, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Forestier, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1999), 786–92. For the importance of love to tragedy, see Carine Barbafieri, Atrée et Céladon: La galanterie dans le théâtre tragique en France (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006). 43. Bernard Lamy, Nouvelles réflexions sur l’Art Poétique (Paris: André Pralard, 1668), 81. [ 143 ]

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44. Ibid., 168. 45. Phillips, The Theatre and Its Critics, 174. 46. François Targa, Le libraire au lecteur, iii. 47. François Hédelin abbé d’Aubignac, La Pratique du théâtre, ed. Hélène Baby (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2011), 66. 48. Georges de Scudéry, Comédie des comédiens (Paris: Augustin Courbé, 1639), 27. 49. In his Apologie, Scudéry makes a similar distinction between “bateleurs” [tumblers] and “comédiens” [actors]. Scudéry, Apologie, 74–75. 50. Scudéry, Apologie, 84. The Colossi of Memnon are two statues of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III that allegedly produced a sound at dawn. See Strabo, Geographica 17.46. 51. Nicolas Mary Desfontaines, Tragédies hagiographiques, ed. Claude Bourqui and Simone de Reyff (Paris: Société des Textes Modernes Français, 2004), 489. All references to Desfontaines’s L’Illustre Comédien are from this edition. 52. “toute la Tragédie, dans la Représentation, ne consiste qu’en discours” [the entire tragedy, in performance, consists only of speech] and “Parler, c’est Agir” [to speak is to act]. D’Aubignac, La Pratique, 407. (“toute la Tragédie, dans la Représentation, ne consiste qu’en discours” or “Parler, c’est Agir”), 407. 53. Desfontaines, Tragédies, 457. 54. Ibid., 471–72. 55. Rotrou, Théâtre, 266. 56. Ibid., 265–66. 57. Bénédicte Louvat-Molozay, “Les noms du personnage de théâtre de Laudun à D’Aubignac,” in Le Discours métalittéraire, eds. Michel Jourde and Jean-Charles Monferran (Geneva: Droz, 2006), 107–22. 58. Rotrou, Théâtre, 266. 59. Lamy, Nouvelles Réflexions, 3. 60. Rotrou, 280. 61. Rotrou takes up two traditional arguments in favor of theater: the “homeopathic” understanding of catharsis, according to which tragedy does not so much “purge” the passions as offer an illustrious example by which the spectator might correct his behavior and Thomas Aquinas’s concept of “eutrapelia,” according to which the soul/mind needs rest and leisure time, analogously to the body. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2a2ae.168.2. 62. Lamy, Nouvelles Réflexions, 77. 63. Scudéry, Apologie, 86 (emphasis mine). 64. Rotrou, Théâtre, 340 and 329. 65. Desfontaines, Tragédies, 495. 66. Rotrou, Théâtre, 277. The author changed the gender of “étude” for metrical purposes. 67. Scudéry, Apologie, 85. [ 144 ]

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68. Gédéon Tallement des Réaux, Historiettes, ed. Antoine Adam, vol. 2 (Paris, Gallimard, 1975), 775. For both the myth and the reality of fatal acting, see Jody Enders, Death By Drama and Other Medieval Urban Legends (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 69. Sabine Chaouche, L’Art du comédien: Déclamation et jeu scénique en France à l’âge classique, 1629–1680 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001), 117. 70. Ramie Targoff, “The Performance of Prayer: Sincerity and Theatricality in Early Modern England,” Representations 60 (Autumn, 1997), 65. 71. Lamy, Nouvelles Réflexions, 77. 72. Ibid., 192–93. 73. Rotrou, Théâtre, 352. 74. Ibid., 325. 75. “Il . . . croit couvrir en rentrant son défaut de mémoire” [He thinks hiding will conceal his lapse in memory]. Rotrou, Théâtre, 324. 76. Desfontaines, Tragédies, 158. 77. In Desfontaines’s version of the embedded play, which is more faithful to the saint’s martyrology, Genest plays a pagan who pretends to be baptized in order not to be disowned by his family, who had previously converted. 78. Rotrou, Théâtre, 331. 79. Desfontaines, Tragédies, 493. 80. Rotrou, Théâtre, 329. 81. Camus, Leçons exemplaires, 469. 82. Chaouche, L’Art du comédien, 363. 83. Cary Howie, “All Saints,” Esprit Créateur 50 (2010), 3. 84. For more on seated or standing kings, see Chaouche, L’Art du comédien, 177–80. 85. Rotrou, Théâtre, 269. 86. Although it is Dioclétian and not Maximin who orders Genest’s death, it is nevertheless a royal spectator who becomes a participant in Genest’s final performance. 87. Rotrou, 347. 88. Ibid., 349. 89. Ibid., 352 90. Desfontaines, Tragédies, 541. 91. Charles Regnault, Marie Stuard, Reyne d’Ecosse, ed. Anne Teulade. Etudes Epistémè 8 (2005), 71.

Chapter 4 1. The play has recently undergone something of a revival. It appeared on the program of the 2015 agrégation and very recently, in 2016, Brigitte Jacques-Wajeman brought it back to the stage. [ 145 ]

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 Recent performances invest the play with contemporary significance, finding in Polyeucte the figure of a religious extremist. This is not especially surprising; in the late seventeenth century Saint-Evremond, otherwise a great admirer of Cornelian tragedy, found fault with the zealotry of Néarque and Polyeucte. In the eighteenth century, Voltaire would label Polyeucte a “fanatic.”   2. “Saint Polyeucte est un martyr dont, s’il m’est permis de parler ainsi, beaucoup ont plutôt appris le nom à la comédie qu’à l’église” [Saint Polyeucte is a martyr whose name, if I may speak this way, many learned at the theater rather than in church]. Pierre Corneille, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1980), 975.   3. J. S. Street, French Sacred Drama from Bèze to Corneille (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 188.  4. Kosta Loukovitch, L’évolution de la tragédie religieuse classique (Geneva: Droz, 1933), 85.   5. According to Fontenelle’s “Vie de Corneille” [Life of Corneille], the play had been read at Mme de Rambouillet’s literary salon before its premiere; the poet Vincent de Voiture reportedly told Corneille that “le christianisme avait extrêmement déplu” [Christianity had greatly displeased]. Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, Œuvres complètes, ed. Alain Niderst, vol. 3 (Paris: Fayard, 1989), 95–96.   6. Charles de Saint-Evremond, Œuvres, ed. René de Planhol (Paris: A la cité des livres, 1927), 180.   7. For more on the erotic dimension of Polyeucte, see Paul Scott, “Manipulating Martyrdom: Corneille’s (Hetero)sexualization of Polyeucte,” Modern Language Review 99 (2004), 328–38.   8. “Je n’ai point fait de narration de la mort de Polyeucte, parce que je n’avais personne pour la faire ni pour l’écouter, que des païens qui ne la pouvaient ni écouter, ni faire que comme ils avaient fait et écouté celle de Néarque, ce qui aurait été une répétition et marque de stérilité, et, en outre, n’aurait pas répondu à la dignité de l’action, qui est terminée par là” [I did not narrate the death of Polyeucte because I had no one to recount it nor hear it other than pagans who could only recount or hear it as they had the death of Néarque, which would have been repetitive and a mark of sterility. Moreover, it would not have risen to the dignity of the plot, which it brings to a close.]. Corneille, Œuvres, 982   9. Tertullian, Apologeticum 50.13 10. “Où l’affection n’est point il n’y peut avoir d’émotion et par conséquent de purgation, ou d’amendement ès moeurs des hommes, qui est le but de la poésie” [Where there is no affection there cannot be any emotion and consequently catharsis, or emendation of man’s morals, which is the goal of poetry]. Jean Chapelain, Opuscules critiques, ed. Alfred C. Hunter (Geneva: Droz, 2007), 196. 11. Michael O’Connell, The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theater in Early-Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 12. John D. Lyons, The Tragedy of Origins: Pierre Corneille and Historical Perspective (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 112. 13. Discernment between the movements of grace and movements of nature is a concern in the Imitation du Christ as well. If “[l]es plus grands dévots . . . à peine . . . ont des yeux assez vifs pour les bien discerner” [the most devout . . . hardly . . . have eyes keen enough to discern them], why should the pagans of Polyeucte be any more successful in this endeavor? Why, moreover, should [ 146 ]

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Polyeucte’s real-world spectators? “[C]omme l’apparence attire le projet, la fausse avec tant d’art quelquefois y préside, que l’un passe pour l’autre, et les yeux les meilleurs se trompent aux mêmes couleurs” [Since appearance is attractive, the false sometimes presides with such art, that one is taken to be the other, and the best eyes are deceived]. The question of discernment, here a theological concern, echoes the stakes of poetic faith or belief that Corneille articulated in the the Abrégé du martyre de saint Polyeucte. See chapter 1. 14. Michal Kobialka, This is My Body: Representational Practices in the Early Middle Ages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 28. 15. Ibid., 216. 16. Olivier Boulnois, Au-delà de l’image: Une archéologie du visuel au Moyen Age (Ve-XVIe siècle) (Paris: Seuil, 2008), 453. 17. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, ed. H. J. Schroeder (Rockville, IL: Tan Books, 2005), 73. 18. For more on this, see Dennis Kennedy’s excellent analysis of spectatorship and belief in The Spectacle and the Spectator (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), especially pp. 204–26. Comparing the South Indian ritual dance known as Teyyam with the Catholic Eucharist, Kennedy argues that “[s]pectation is significantly enhanced by belief, which changes utterly the interior nature of the watching. But spectation with belief is still spectation, which is to say it is complete only in the context of the spectacle” (225). In other words, ritual and theater differ very little from one another, except in the mind of the spectator. 19. Christian Biet and Christophe Triau, Qu’est-ce que le théâtre? (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), 102. 20. Ibid. 21. For a sampling of these plays, see Théâtre de la cruauté et récits sanglants, ed. Christian Biet (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2006) 22. Anthony Dawson and Paul Yanchin, The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 21. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., 27. Aligning Anglicanism with dramatic practice accounts for the virtuality of the stage, but it also suggests an affinity between Protestantism and performance. What Judith Butler writes about performance, for example, uncannily echoes Protestant critiques of the sacraments: “Such acts . . . are performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means.” Butler’s peformative acts coincide with sacraments, however, where they are both efficacious. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (London: Routledge, 1990), 136. 25. I borrow the expression “sacramental poetics” from Regina Schwartz, Sacramental Poetics at the Dawn of Secularism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). Unlike Schwartz, who argues that a kind of poetic sacramentality (in the sense of productive “sign making”) in literary works compensated for the disappearance of Eucharistic sacramentality in post-Reformation England, I use “sacramental poetics” to describe a “representational practice” (Kobialka) whereby the sacramental dynamics of the Eucharist—simultaneously obscuring and revealing a “presence”—inform Corneille’s Polyeucte. [ 147 ]

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26. Joseph Bergin, Church, Society, and Religious Change in France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 237. 27. Corneille, “Au R. P. Delidel, de la Compagnie de Jésus,” in Œuvres, ed. Georges Couton, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), 721–22. “Au lecteur,” in Œuvres, vol. 2, 642. 28. For more on Corneille’s relationship with the Jesuits, see Marc Fumaroli, Héros et orateurs (Droz, 1990), 62–208. According to Fumaroli, the Jesuit emphasis on free will and the individual’s role in accepting or rejecting divine grace left its mark on Corneille’s theater. Others, including Serge Doubrovsky and Georges Forestier, have argued that Corneille’s dramatic output can be understood without invoking the author’s religious faith. For a reappraisal of the role that Jansenism plays (or doesn’t) in Racinian tragedy, see Philippe Sellier, “Le jansénisme des tragédies de Racine: réalité ou illusion?” in Cahiers de l’Association Internationale des Etudes Françaises 31 (1979): 135–48. 29. Jean-Vincent Blanchard, “Beyond Belief: Sovereignty and the Spectacle of Martyrdom in Early Modern France,” Seventeenth-Century French Studies 36, Iss. 2 (2014): 94–108. 30. For comprehensive overview of the De Imitatione Christi and its many translations in early modern Europe, see Maximilian von Habsburg, Catholic and Protestant Translations of the Imitatio Christi 1425–1650 (London: Routledge, 2016). 31. André Stegmann, L’héroïsme cornélien, vol. 2 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1968), 322–34. 32. Ibid., 328. 33. “Il n’y a évidemment pas lieu d’examiner certains éléments propres à l’Imitation, notamment de pratique religieuse: prière, vie du cloître, obéissance au supérieur, communion. Le quatrième livre en particulir intéresse peu notre sujet” [Obviously there is no reason to examine certain elements unique to the Imitation, particularly religious practice: prayer, cloister life, obedience to one’s superior, communion. The fourth book in particular is of little interest to our subject]. Stegmann, L’héroïsme, 322. 34. Marie Philip Haley, “Polyeucte and the De Imitatione Christi,” PMLA 75 (1960), 174–83. Haley’s article examines the textual similarities between the Latin De Imitatione Christi and Polyeucte. 35. Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis ficii sacrimentum, id est sacrum signum est [sacrifice then is the visible ritual of an invisible sacrifice, that is, it is a sacred symbol]. Augustine, City of God, Volume III: Books 8–11, trans. David S. Wiesen. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 269. 36. Romans 6:4 37. “Character” derives from the Greek kharakter “engraving, engraved mark,” and ultimately from the verb kharassein “to engrave.” La Bruyère’s Caractères (1688), like Theophrastus’s Ethikoi Kharakteres before it, displayed the distinctive traits of various moral qualities or vices. 38. Augustine deployed these analogies to specific ends. Arguing against the Donatists, who held that the sacraments performed by any clergy who had lapsed during persecution (e.g., those who chose to comply with the law rather than suffer martyrdom) were invalid, Augustine asserted that it is not through the officiant that the sacraments derive their power (ex opere operantis), but rather through the sacrament itself (ex opere operato). 39. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 52. [ 148 ]

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40. Sed quaedam, inquiunt, sanctae feminae tempore persecutionis, ut insectatores suae pudicitiae devitarent, in rapturum atque nacaturum se fluvium proiecerunt eoque modo defunctae sunt earumque martyria in catholica ecclesia veneratione celeberrima frequentantur [But, they say, in time of persecution certain saintly women, to avoid the pursuers of their chastity, cast themselves into a river that would ravish and drown them, and in that way they died and their memorial shrines are frequented by great numbers who venerate them as martyrs in the Catholic Church]. Augustine, City of God, Volume I: Books 1–3, trans. George E. McCracken (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), 108–9. Augustine adds that if these women acted “by divine command” (divinitus iussae) and not “human misconception” (humanitus deceptae), only then would they deserve veneration as martyrs. 41. Haley, “Polyeucte,” 178. 42. Tertullian, On Baptism, 16. 43. Nam quicumque, etiam non percepto regenerationis lavacro, pro Christi confessione moriuntur, tantum eis valet ad dimittenda peccata quantum si abluerentur sacro fonte baptismatis [For all those who perish for their acknowledgement of Christ, even though they have not experienced the cleansing water of regeneration, are just as effectively delivered from their sins as they would be if they were washed by the holy font of baptism]. Augustine, City of God, Volume IV: Books 12–15, trans. Philip Levine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 154–55. 44. Blake Leyerle, “Blood is Seed,” The Journal of Religion 81 (2001): 45–47. 45. For the erotic implications of this unseen scene of blood spatter, see Paul Scott, “Manipulating martyrdom.” 46. Antoine Adam, Histoire de la littérature française du XVIIe siècle, vol. 1 (Paris: Del Duca, 1962), 539–40. See also, Octave Nadal, Le sentiment de l’amour dans l’oeuvre de Pierre Corneille (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), 206–7 and Serge Doubrovsky, Corneille et la dialectique du héros (Paris: Gallimard, 1963), 253–54. 47. Jean Schlumberger, Plaisir à Corneille (Paris: Gallimard, 1963), 96 and Jacques Maurens, La tragédie sans tragique: le néo-stoïcisme dans l’oeuvre de Pierre Corneille (Paris: Armand Colin, 1966), 304. 48. André Georges, “Les conversions de Pauline et Félix et l’évolution religieuse de Sévère,” Les lettres romanes (Feb–May 1997): 35–51, and Nina Ekstein, “The Conversion of Polyeucte’s Félix: The Problem of Religion and Theater,” French Forum 34.1 (2009): 1–17. 49. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 982. 50. Acts 9:3–19; 22:6–21; 26:122–18. 51. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 982. 52. See chapter 1. 53. Jean Chapelain, in the preface to his ill-fated Christian epic La Pucelle ou la France délivrée (1657), similarly found himself at pains to explain the inclusion of dei ex machina. He argues, like Corneille, that such miracles are plausible in fiction on the grounds that they are already believed by the reader: “cette sorte de machine où la divinité intervient, lorsqu’elle passe pour vraie, devient aussitôt vraisemblable auprès de ceux qui sont persuadés du pouvoir de cette divinité” [this kind of machine where a divinity intervenes, when it is taken to be true, immediately becomes [ 149 ]

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verisimilar according to those who are convinced of that divinity’s power]. This holds true even when the miracles are invented by the poet (“quand même elles seraient inventées”), so long as they are Christian miracles. Christians, he notes, “mieux persuadés encore des choses saintes que les païens ne l’étaient” [more convinced of sacred things than the pagans were], have no more trouble believing in miraculous events than in ordinary, natural ones. Jean Chapelain, Opuscules critiques, 365–66. 54. Andrea Frisch, The Invention of the Eyewitness: Witnessing and Testimony in Early Modern France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 144. 55. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 1047. 56. Compare with Desfontaines’s Le Martyre de Saint Eustache (ll.115–16): “Et ce sang que tu vois est ce prix glorieux / Qui t’ôte des Enfers, et t’achète les Cieux” [And this blood that you see is the glorious prize / That plucks you from Hell and buys for you Heaven]. Desfontaines, Tragédies hagiographiques, eds. Claude Bourqui and Simone de Reyff (Paris: Société des Textes Modernes Français, 2004), 120. 57. “Ainsi Floridor et Beau-Château en ce qu’ils sont en eux-mêmes, ne doivent être considérés que comme Représentants; et cet Horace et ce Cinna qu’ils représentent, doivent être de véritables personnages . . . comme si Floridor et Beau-Château cessaient d’être en nature, et se trouvaient transformés en ces Hommes, dont ils portent le nom et les intérêts. Ainsi la partie de l’Hôtel de Bourgogne . . . où se joue la tragédie, est le lieu représentant . . . , et celui qui y est représenté par cet espace . . . est dans la Tragédie le lieu véritable” [And so Floridor and Beau-Château as themselves must be considered representers, and this Horace and Cinna that they represent, must be considered the real characters . . . as though Floridor and Beau-Château ceased to exist and were transformed into these men, whose names and interests they bear. In this way the part of the Hôtel de Bourgogne where the tragedy is performed, is the representing place . . . , and that which is represented by this space . . . is, within the tragedy, the true place]. D’Aubignac, La Pratique, 86–87. Emphasis mine. For more on D’Aubignac’s theory of signs, see Emanuelle Hénin, Ut pictura theatrum (Geneva: Droz, 2003), 260–73. 58. C. S. Peirce introduced the term index to denote signs with a direct link to their referents. Conversely, in “symbols” the link is grounded in convention (e.g., the shape and color of a stop sign) and in “icons” the link is one of resemblance (e.g., a representational painting). See “Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs,” in The Philosophy of Peirce: Selected Writings, J. Buckler, ed. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1940), 98–119. 59. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 1049. 60. Furetière defines “hostie” as a “victime qu’on immole en sacrifice à la Divinité” [victim immolated in sacrifice to a divinity], further remarking that “ce mot d’hostie vient ab hostibus, à cause qu’on en immoloit devant la bataille pour se rendre les Dieux propices, ou aprés la victoire, pour les en remercier” [this word hostie comes from ab hostibus, because sacrifices were made before battle to propitiate the gods, or after victory to thank them]. Antoine Furetière, Dictionnaire universel (The Hague: Arnoud and Reiner Leers, 1701), 1102. 61. Ibid. 62. Compare with what Corneille writes in the Imitation: “Et dessus nos Autels on offre à tout moment / Le parfait sacrifice, et la victime pure” [And on our altars we offer every moment / The perfect sacrifice, and the pure victim]. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 2, 1124. [ 150 ]

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63. Recall the Cyrano episode from chapter 1. 64. Corneille’s familiarity with such Scholastic terminology appears in lines 843–44 of the 1643 edition of Polyeucte: God is the “[s]eule maître du destin, seul être indépendant, / Substance qui jamais ne reçois accident” [only master of destiny, only independent being, / Substance that never has an accident]. This line, perhaps too erudite, disappeared from subsequent editions. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 1670. 65. Canons and Decrees, 73. 66. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 2, 1158. 67. Frisch, The Invention of the Eyewitness, 144. Emphasis mine. 68. Pierre Pasquier, “L’option martyrologique des dramaturges parisiens,” Littératures classiques 70 (2010): 169–81. 69. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 982. 70. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 977. 71. Ibid. 72. “On prend bien quelque aversion pour lui, on désapprouve sa manière d’agir, mais cette aversion ne l’emporte pas sur la pitié qu’on a de Polyeucte, et n’empêche pas que sa conversion miraculeuse à la fin de la pièce, ne le réconcilie pleinement avec l’Auditoire” [One indeed has some aversion toward him, one disapproves of his behavior, but this aversion does not take precedence over the pity one feels for Polyeucte, and does not prevent his miraculous conversion at the end of the play from reconciling him completely with the audience]. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 3, 150. 73. Mitchel Greenberg, Corneille, Classicism, and the Ruses of Symmetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 157. 74. Ibid. 75. Peter Brook’s minimal definition of theater as “a man walk[ing] across an empty space whilst someone else is watching him” applies here, with one crucial modification: the first man’s procession across the empty space must be motivated by the other’s desire to see him walk. Peter Brook, The Empty Space, A Book About the Theater: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968), 9. 76. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 1049. 77. The Eleusinian Ceres was a goddess of the initiatory Eleusinian mysteries. The Good Goddess was believed to have been foreign in origin; her worship involved nocturnal rites, wine, and blood sacrifice. The “monsters” no doubt refer to the theriocephalous deities of ancient Egyptian religion: the jackal-headed Anubis, for example. Sévère’s speech reproduces the arguments Tertullian put forth against paganism in his Apologeticum, which appears to be Corneille’s source text both here and in 5.6. 78. Katherine Ibbett, The Style of State in French Theater: 1630–1660 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 82–83. 79. R. C. Knight, Corneille’s Tragedies: The Role of the Unexpected (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1992), 42. [ 151 ]

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80. For an in-depth analysis of the role Julian played in early modern French thought, see Julie Boch, Apostat ou philosophe? La Figure de l’empereur Julien dans la pensée française de Montaigne à Voltaire (Paris: Champion, 2013). 81. Michel de Montaigne, “De la liberté de la conscience,” Essais, ed. Pierre Villey (Paris: F. Alcan, 1930–1931), 680. 82. Ibid. Emphasis mine. I am grateful to Eric MacPhail for suggesting the comparison of Sévère to Montaigne’s Julian. 83. “On les [Christians] hait; la raison, je ne la connais pas. . . . Par curiosité j’ai voulu les connaître” [The Christians are hated; I don’t know the reason why. . . . Out of curiosity I wanted to become acquainted with them]. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 1036. 84. Montaigne, Essais, 679. 85. Ibid. He also suggests that religious tolerance might backfire: “cela est digne de consideration, que l’Empereur Julien se sert, pour attiser le trouble de la dissension civile, de cette mesme recepte de liberté de conscience que nos Roys viennent d’employer pour l’estraindre.” For more on Montaigne’s portrait of Julian, see Louis Cons, “Montaigne et Julien l’Apostat,” Humanisme Et Renaissance 4, no. 4 (1937): 411–20. See also Jean-Robert Armogathe, “Montaigne et la censure romaine: Julien l’Apostat,” in Dieu à notre commerce et société: Montaigne et la théologie, ed. Philippe Desan (Geneva: Droz, 2008), 251–58. 86. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 1049. 87. Acts 5:12 88. Aristotle, Poetics, 1452a20–25 89. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Halliwell, 42. 90. D’Aubignac, La Pratique, 150. 91. Chapelain, Opuscules, 209. 92. Ibid. 93. Denis Guénoun, Actions et acteurs: Raisons du drame sur scène (Paris: Belin, 2005), 57. Guénoun’s sartorial metaphor (“habillage”) was commonplace in the early modern period, as Emmanuelle Hénin reminds us: “les traités horatiens de la Renaissance considèrent les préceptes physionomiques et vestimentaires comme la traduction visuelle de la convenance des caractères.” Emmanuelle Hénin, Ut pictura theatrum (Geneva: Droz, 2003), 451–56. 94. Aristotle, La Poétique, trans. Roselyne Dupont-Roc and Jean Lallot (Paris: Seuil, 1980), 262. 95. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Halliwell, 48. 96. La Mesnardière, La Poétique (Paris: Antoine de Sommaville, 1639), 140. 97. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 3, 83. 98. Aristotle, La Poétique, trans. Dupont-Roc and Lallot, 264. 99. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Œuvres (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), 275. Anna Maria Gonzaga (1616– 1684) was an Italian noblewoman, born in Paris, who became the Princess Palatine in 1645 upon her marriage to Edward, Count Palatine of Simmern. She allegedly led an adventurous, even [ 152 ]

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 scandalous life, but converted in 1671 and thereafter devoted herself to the Church. Bossuet’s funeral oration focuses on her conversion as a model for all wayward Christians. 100. Chapelain, Opuscules, 201. 101. Georges Forestier, Passions tragiques, règles classiques (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2003), 170. 102. For more on Chapelain’s “merveilleux vraisemblable,” see Forestier, Passions tragiques, 163–74. See also Roger Zuber, Les émerveillements de la raison (Paris: Klincksieck, 1997). 103. R. Darren Gobert, The Mind-Body Stage (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 43. 104. For more on the potentially dangerous consequences of admiration, see Christian Biet, “Plaisirs et dangers de l’admiration,” Littératures classiques 32 (1998): 121–34. 105. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 2, 1182. 106. Religious conversions are “si ordinaires . . . qu’elles ne sortent point de la vraisemblance”  [so ordinary . . . that they do not exceed verisimilitude]. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 1, 982. 107. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 3, 127. 108. Forestier, Passions tragiques, 116. This argument—the incredible must be believed—recalls Tertullian’s articulation of belief in On The Flesh of Christ. See Introduction.

Conclusion  1. Pierre Corneille, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), 778.   2. Marc Fumaroli sees in Théodore a “Hippolyte au féminin” and in Placide “une sorte de Phèdre au masculin, un Actéon par ses propres chiens dévoré”; “Placide, obsédé jusqu’à la folie par l’invincible pureté de Thédore, n’est coupable d’autre crime que d’aimer Théodore, ce qui suffit à le perdre et à la perdre. Son statut théologique anticipe étrangement sur celui de la Phèdre racinienne.” Fumaroli, Heros et Orateurs: Rhétorique et dramaturgie cornéliennes (Geneva: Droz, 1990), 240.  3. François Hédelin, abbé d’Aubignac, La Pratique du théâtre, ed. Hélène Baby (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2011), 110.  4. Corneille, Œuvres, vol. 2, 269.  5. Ibid.  6. Ibid.  7. Aristotle, Poetics, 1450b3.  8. Pierre Nicole, Traité de la Comédie, in Laurent Thirouin, L’Aveuglement salutaire: le réquisitoire contre le théâtre dans la France classique (Paris: Champion, 1997), p. 87.   9. Charles de Saint-Evremond, “De la tragédie ancienne et moderne,” in Œuvres en prose, ed. René de Planhol (Paris: Cité des livres, 1927), 173. 10. See, for example, Marc Fumaroli’s “Théodore, vierge et martyre: ses sources italiennes, et les raisons de son échec à Paris” in Héros et orateurs, 223–59. For Fumaroli, the rigorous Augustinian (Jansensist) distinction between the civitas Dei [City of God] and the civitas terrena [City of the Earth] [ 153 ]

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that gained ground in France beginning in the 1640s signaled the end of the Christian humanism that continued to influence Italian culture, for example. This convincing analysis does not, however, take into account the porosity of Port-Royal’s walls and the consequent interpenetration of religious and worldly culture. For another reading of Théodore’s failure, see Christian Biet, “La sainte, la prostituée, l’actrice: L’impossible modèle religieux dans Théodore, vierge et martyre de Corneille,” in Littératures classiques 39 (2000): 81–103. 11. Ernest Boysse, Le Théâtre des jésuites (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), 113–34. 12. Guy Spielmann, “Pour une théorie d’ensemble des spectacles de l’Age Classique,” L’âge de la représentation: L’art du spectacle au XVIIe siècle (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2007), 190. 13. Recently, Blair Hoxby has taken on the hegemonic (but also myopic) vision of tragedy which excludes a large body of dramatic texts, often designated as “tragedies” by their authors and audiences. In What Was Tragedy? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), Hoxby shows that the poetics of tragedy developped during the early modern period was far more accommodating of generic eccentricities than our current vision, which gained currency in the nineteenth century. 14. Marvin Carlson, “Theatre and Religion: The World’s Oldest Couple,” Baylor Journal of Theatre and Performance 1.1 (2004), 5–8. 15. Terry Eagleton, Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 133. 16. Giorgio Agamben, The Kingdom and The Glory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 287.

[ 154 ]

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INDEX

Abrégé du martyre de saint Polyeucte (Corneille), 15–17, 23, 25, 27, 90, 108 Académie Française, xi, xii acting: apologies for, 81; art of, xxi, 73; and becoming the character, 80–83, 85, 86; and boundaries of actio, 82, 85; and conversion, 62–63, 64, 81, 85–86, 119; and figure of Genest, 75–78, 80–83; and imitation, 80–83, 85; as a profession, 63, 64–65, 73; and the sacraments, xviii, 64, 67–68, 85; and spectatorship, 5, 75; and transubstantiation, 95; and trope of the converted actor, xxiii, 62–67, 85–86. See also actors; representation actors: and accounts of off-stage events, 38; as artists, 75, 76; and becoming the character, 86, 140n74, 142n15; condemnation of, 71, 73–74, 75; and crime of infamy, xii, xvi, 6, 71; and delivery (actio), 80, 81, 82, 85; and exclusion from the sacraments, 71; and female roles, 72; and imitation, 81–82, 83, 142n15; and “La comédienne convertie” (“The Converted Actrice”) (Camus), 63; Luigi Riccoboni, 2; and martyrdom, 75, 124–25; and Mondory’s performance as Hérode, 78; Nicolas Desfontaines, 47, xvii; and passions, 141n8; qualities of, 73–77, 80; and relationship between subject and object, 93–94; and relationship with audience, 5, 83–84; restrained number of, xiii; roles of, 77–78, 80; and sacrifice, 94–95; Saint Genesius, xxii–xxiii, 62–70, 75–78, 80–81, 94–95, 124–25; and sainthood, 64–65; and sanctity, 62–63, 65; as sinners, 64, 73; and tragedy, 115; and trope of the converted actor, xxii–xxiii, 62–64, 141n3; as unworthy of reprensenting saints, 17–18 Apologie (Scudéry), 75 Artaud, Antonin, 86, 94–95, 125 Art poétique (Boileau): and principles of neoclassicism, 12; and religious theater, 12

Aubignac, François Hédelin d’, xxii; and actors’ roles, 73–74; and dictum “to speak is to act,” xxiii; and the dramatic poem, 75–76; and French theater, 126; and La Pratique du Théâtre, 6–7; and La Pucelle d’Orléans, 73; and peripeteia, 114; and prostitution of Theodora, 122; and representation, 105; and reservations about religious drama, 12, 14, 17–18; and roles of poet and historian, 20; and separation of the stage from Christian faith, 7–9; and theater as entertainment, 7, 94; and theater’s rule of reason, 6; and verbal accounts in theater, 44 Augustine, Saint: and Augustinianism, 72; and baptism, 98, 99; and Christian interpretation, 71, 82–83; and The City of God, 48, 99; and discourse on the gaze, 34; and linkage of theater to polytheism, 13; and sacraments, 148n38; and suffering, 142n16; and theater as the seat of sin, 6, 135n4; and two cities paradigm, 127n8, 153–54n10; works of, 4 Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez de, 19 baptism: of blood, 99–100; and Christian identity, 103, 107; of Eustathius and his family, 46; and Polyeucte’s zeal, 17, 98–99; and trope of the converted actor, xxii, 62, 63, 67, 83–84, 90, 145n77; by water, 99, 149n43 Baro, Balthasar, xvi, 8, 71, 72 Bergerac, Cyrano de, 4–5 Biet, Christian, 94 Boileau, Nicolas: and Christian mysteries, 13–14, 27, 131n34; and condemnation of religious drama, 12, 14; and precepts of Aristotle and Horace, 12; and truth as seeming false, 14–16, 27 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne: and actors’ passions, 64; and advocacy of Christian [ 165 ]

I N D E X

spectacles (spectacula christiana), 35–36; and conversion, 116; and Panégyrique de saint Victor, 33, 35, 61; sermons of, xxi, 4; and violent imagery, 45, 135n3. See also Maximes et réflexions sur la comédie (Bossuet) Carlson, Marvin, 3, 126 Cériziers, René de: hagiographical panegyrics of, 48; sermons of, 47 Chapelain, Jean: and catharsis, 146n10; and French theater, 126; and human judgment, 21; and logic, reason, and morality, 27; and the marvelous, 117; and nominalist modernity, 132n66; and peripeteia, 114; and poetic faith, 15, 20, 22–23, 24, 44, 92, 133n73; and Polyeucte, martyr (Corneille), 119; and religious faith, 22, 23, 133n73; and spectator’s assent, 24; and verisimilitude, 27, 149–50n53 Chappuzeau, Samuel, 64–65, 81 Christianity: and angels, 56–58; and blood, 99– 100; and Christian humanism, 153–54n10; and Christ’s story, 29–30; and conversion, xxiii, 59, 68–69, 99–100, 105, 106, 108, 120; and early Christian communities, xx, 100; and entertainment, 48; and faith, 7, 28, 69, 99, 100; and Godeau’s antitheatrical sonnet, xv–xvi; and the Incarnation, 29, 66; and love of the Cross, 135n3; and martyrdom, 55–56, 63, 66, 68–69, 101–102; and miracles, 103, 149–50n53; and religious plays, xvii, xx–xxi, 7, 62–66, 68–69; and replacing truth with fiction in theater, 82–83; and Roman persecutions, 51, 54, 62, 68–69, 108–13; and story of salvation, xix; symbol of, 2–3; and term “apology,” 70; and theology, 36; and theophany, 37; and torment of persecutors, 143n30; and tragedy, 128n11; and trope of the converted actor, 62–70, 83–86. See also Docetism; martyrs; religion; spectacle Chrysostom, 6 Church: and actors as criminals, xii; authority of, 5; and culture of Catholic Church, 93– 94; and effects of spectacle on the spectator, 44–45; and feast of Saint Genesius, 65; and God’s truths, 19; and history writing, 26; and martyrs’ blood for converts, 92, 99–100; as place for moral instruction, 22; and problem of suicide, 99; and promotion of saints, 30–31; and sacraments, 13, 67, 93–94; and separation from theater, xv, 2–3, 8–9, 31, 124; and stage, xxii, 95–96 [ 166 ]

Le Cid (Corneille): and Rodrigue, 105; and lack of verisimilitude, xii, 119; public enthusiasm for, 18–19 The City of God (Augustine), 48, 99 La Comédie des comédiens (Scudéry), 74–75, 76 Confrérie de la Passion (Confraternity of the Passion), 1–3, 8, 12, 47, 129n1, 129n5 conversion: and Christian spectacles (spectacula christiana), 32, 35, 54; of Eustathius, 46, 47, 49, 54, 59; and generation of new converts, 92, 99–100; and Genesius converting in play, 62, 65–66, 69, 80–81, 83–86, 88–90; and hagiographical theater, 103; in Le Martyre de saint Eustache (Desfontaines), 59, 60; and Pauline’s conversion in Polyeucte (Corneille), xxiii, 17, 91–92, 93, 100–108, 117, 119–20; and Paul of Tarsus, 102; in Polyeucte, martyr (Corneille), 109–10, 113–14, 116–17, 118, 119; and the Prince of Conti, 3; in saints’ lives, 118; and sanctity, 63; and spectacles, 45; of spectators, 49, 91; and spiritual victory of martyrs, 32; and trope of the converted actor, xxii–xxiii, 62–66, 85–86; and verisimilitude, 153n106 Corneille, Pierre: and Aristotelian dramatic theory, xxiii, 31, 115–16, 128n13; and belief in saints, 16–17; and character of Theodora, 122–23; and Christian tragedy, xvii, 90–91, 121; and concerns about hagiography and fiction, 25–26; and conversion, 108; and entertainment, 124; and Examen de Polyeucte, 24–26, 92, 100, 101, 102; and God, 151n64; and horror leading to disbelief, 44; and imagination in fiction, 134n86; and Le Cid, xii, 18; and martyrdom of Theodora, 8; and the marvelous, 117; and moral and sacramental theology, 96–97; and moral benefit of theater, xv; other plays of, 26, 97; and prostitution, 122; and representational practice, 94, 97; and reservations about religious drama, 15, 16; and sacramental dynamics, 120; and Saint Polyeuctus, xiii, 8, 26, 151n72; and scriptural texts, 24–26, 102; and secular stage, 125; and the Society of Jesus, 96, 148n28; translations of, xxi, 97; and verisimilitude, 15, 26, 102, 118; and wonder, 117 Council of Trent, 21, 67, 98, 106 Counter-Reformation, 30–31, 36, 45, 59 Desfontaines, Nicolas Mary: as an actor, xvii, 47; and alteration of hagiographical material, 68; and character of Genest, 77, 81; and Dioclétian’s opinion of theater, 77–78; other

I N D E X

plays of, 47; and Roman audiences, 80; and tragedy, xvi–xvii, 47, 88. See also Le Martyre de Saint Eustache (Desfontaines); L’Illustre Comédien (Desfontaines) Dipné, Infante d’Irlande (Avre), 10–11 Ditchfield, Simon, xxi, 31, 59, 139n17 Docetism, 29, 30, 66 French theater: during the 1640s, xvi, 5–6, 47, 49, 90, 124; and ancient purposes, xii, xiv; and antitheatrical critics, 71, 82, 126; and Aristotelian conventions, 125; and Biblical imagery, 36; and Célinde (Baro), 71–72; and Christianization of the stage, xi–xii, 45, 97–98; and Christian theater, 65, 90–98, 124; and the Confrérie de la Passion (Confraternity of the Passion) , xxi, 1–3, 8, 12; and Corneille’s Horace, 15–16; and decorum, xii, xxi, 10–11, 20, 24, 91; and devotional plays, 10–12; and differentiation between real and feigned, 66, 85; and divine grace, 68, 103; and dramatic theory, 20–21, 24, 78–81; and ecclesiastical critics, xiv; and effects of spectacle on the spectator, 44–45, 60–61; and emulation of the Ancients, 12–14; and encounter between sacred truth and secular fiction, 15–16, 18; and entertainment, xii, xxii, 6, 7, 14, 27, 36, 64, 79, 94, 130n16; and excessive pathos, 43–44; and faith, 14, 15, 18, 69, 93, 94, 124; and Genesius legend, 67, 68–70; and hagiographical theater, xiii–xiv, xix, 10–12, 17–18, 90–91, 124, 126; history and mythology as subjects for, 5, 8, 10, 12; and hypotyposis, xxii, 101, 102; and imitation, xvi, 73, 81, 83, 85, 88, 92; and instruction, xii; and martyrological theater, xvi–xxiii, 8, 9–12, 32–41, 45, 47–61, 72; and the miraculous, 58, 59; and modernization, 126; and music, xxii, 33, 49, 50–51, 54, 57, 60; and mystery plays, xii, xiii, 6, 9, 10, 39, 47; and “On Theater” (Godeau), xiv–xv; origins of, xii, 3, 5–6; and Parisian stage, xiii, xvi, xxii, 1–3, 5, 8–9, 41, 47, 49, 65, 124, 130n21; and passions, xiv, 35, 72, 74, 75, 76, 81; and peripeteia, 114, 117; and perversion of truth, 73; as place for moral instruction, 22, 64, 126; and poetic faith, 15, 19–20, 22–23, 27, 44, 126, 146–47n13; and power of theatrical illusion, 78–80; and production of emotional effects, 42–44, 78–79; and prostitution, xii; and provincial theater, xiii, 9, 10, 75, 124; and public’s ability to appreciate, 19; and public’s need

for pleasure, 18; and purity of French, 74–75; and Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, 12–14; and reason, 6, 77, 114; and reforms from the 1620s through 1640s, 5–6; and relationship with religion, xix, 27, 45, 64, 88–89, 124–26; and religious subjects, 5, 9–12, 13, 18, 47, 62–72; and religious theater, 5, 6–19, 31, 90–91; and replacing truth with fiction, 82–83; and risk of profanation, 7, 16, 18; ritual origins of, 5–6, 126; and rules against blood on stage, xxii, 32, 38, 41, 44, 61; and sacramental dynamics, 93–94, 120; sacramentality of, 126; and the sacred, xxiii, 3, 6, 7, 16–17, 67, 90–91, 103, 126; and Saint Regina plays, 9–12, 124; and sanctity, xiv, xvii, xxi, 7, 8, 12, 14, 27, 31, 61, 86, 124–25; and the secular, xxi, 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 14, 67, 126; and secularization, xxi–xxii, 3, 6, 22, 124; and self-sacrifice, 94–95, 97–98; and separation from religious sphere, 31; and seventeenth century apologies, 74–76, 80–81; and sight of blood, 104; and spectacle’s reach across social boundaries, 43–44; spectacular nature of, 75–76; and stage machinery, xxii, 49; and substitution of martyrdom for gladiatorial battle, 45; and the term “Hostie” (Host), 4; and three unities, 47, 90; and the “total work of art,” xxii, 86; and verisimilitude, xii, xvi, xxi, 11, 15, 20–21, 24, 27, 58, 73, 102–103, 117, 118–20, 124; and violence, xi, 45, 97, 137n27; and visible death or violence, 37, 38; and wonder, 58. See also acting; martyrological theater; representation; spectacle; tragedy Godeau, Antoine: and antitheatrical sonnet, xiv–xv, 22; and Christianization of French theater, xi–xii; as a member of the Académie Française, xi; and moral benefit of theater, xv–xvi, 122; and religious theater, xi–xvi; and representation of angels and Christian subjects, xx–xxi; writings of, xi hagiographical theater: and Aristotelian dramatic poetics, 31; and Dipné, Infante d’Irlande (Avre), 10–11; and estrangement effect, xix; and hagiographical literature, xii–xiii, 24–27; and hagiographical subjects, xix, 10, 27, 31, 47–48, 120, 124; and hagiographical tragedies, 49, 124, 125; and juxtaposition of sacred and secular, xix, 15–16; and Martyre de la glorieuse sainte Reine d’Alize (Ternet), [ 167 ]

I N D E X

11–12; and plays of Desfontaines, xvii, 47; and poetic faith, 27; and Polyeucte, martyr (Corneille), xiii, 15, 26, 90; and problem of belief linked with performance, 17–18; and relationship between church and stage, 126; religious significance of, 90–91; and risk of sacrilege, 16, 27; and sanctification of the stage, 31; and Spanish theater, xix; and verisimilitude, 26–27; and violation of decorum rules, 10–11 Hôtel de Bourgogne: and the Confrérie de la Passion (Confraternity of the Passion), 1–3, 47, 129n1, 129n5; and criminal activity, 3; and decrees against performing the sacred, 3; escutcheon of, 1–3, 63; and Parisian stage, 6; and performances of plays about St. Eustache, 8, 47; and religious drama, 1–3; and representation, 150n57; rights to, 1, 2 Ibbett, Katherine, 111 L’Illustre Comédien (Desfontaines): and actors’ good qualities, 76–78; and actors’ passions, 75, 78–79; apologetic dimension of, 86, 88; and audience, 76; and conversion, 119; and Dioclétian’s remorse, 69; and hagiographical tragedies, 47; and relationship of throne to theater, 88; and sacramental dynamics, xxiii; and Saint Genesius, 65, 69, 76, 77, 78–79, 84–86, 88–89; and theatrical illusion, 84–85, 88–89 L’Imitation de Jésus-Christ (Corneille), 97, 107, 118, 146–47n13 literature: and the brazen bull, 50–51, 139n61, 140n76; and Christianization of French theater, xi–xii; and decorum, 133–34n85; and devotional literature, xiii, 63, 96; and the dramatic poem, 75–76; and early modern English scholarship, 95–96; and the epic, 58–59; and excessive pathos, 43–44; and faith in plays’ events, 15, 24; and freethinkers, 14; and hagiographical literature, xii–xiii; and importance of saints, xxi; and “La comediénne convertie” (“The Converted Actrice”) (Camus), 63; and lyric poetry, 41; and poetic faith, 22–23, 24; and Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, 12–14; and reason, 21, 77; and the secular, 48; and secular understanding of fiction, 21, 24; and seventeenth century apologies, 70–71; and theology, 128n30; and theory in early modern France, 21–23; and tragedy as a genre, 7, 20–21; and transformation of horror into beauty, 37; and verisimilitude, [ 168 ]

xxii, 20–21, 27, 28, 133–134n85. See also French theater; neoclassicism; tragedy Louis XIII, xii, 6, 71 Louis XIV, 1, 48 Loukovitch, Kosta, xvii, 91 Lyons, John D., 93 martyrdom: accounts of, 92, 98; and actors, 62–66, 68–69, 75; of Adrian, 69; and baptism of blood, 99, 105; and bodily suffering, 36–41, 49, 55, 60–61, 93; and Christian spectacles (spectacula christiana), 32, 33, 36, 48, 54; and conversion, 105, 107, 110; and Corneille’s Pauline, 55, 91–92, 105; of Didymus, 121; and Dipné, 10–11; and discourse on the gaze, 33–34; of Erasmus, 36–37; of Eustathius, 45–46, 49, 53, 54; and figure of Genest, 124–25; and figure of the tortured body, 37–41; and generation of new converts, 92; and heaven, 53; and imitation of Christ, xix–xx, 66; in Le Martyre de saint Eustache (Desfontaines), 59; logic of, 139n74; and the Martyrdom of Polycarp, xx; and martyrological narrative, 55–56; and martyrological tragedy, xviii, xxiii, 11, 88; of Néarque, 92, 101–102; and new believers in God, 99–100; palm of, 57, 105, 138n54, 143n30; of Polyeucte, xxiii, 8, 17, 27, 90, 91–94, 99–100, 102, 103–105, 107, 110, 113, 119–20; religious significance of, xxiii, 27, 35–36, 45, 99, 102; of Saint Catherine, 41; of Saint Cecilia, 63; and Saint Genesius, 65–66, 68–69, 75, 86–88; and Saint Regina, 10, 11–12, 124; of saints, xvi, 27, 35, 36, 63, 75, 124; of Saint Victor, 61, 135n2, 135n3; spectacle of, 32–36, 59–60, 88–89; and substitution of for gladiatorial battle, 45; and theater’s rule of reason, xx; of Theodora, 8, 121; and transformation of horror into beauty, 37; and violence, 136n18; wondrous quality of, 61. See also torture Martyre de la glorieuse sainte Reine d’Alize (Ternet), 11–12 Martyre de saincte Catherine (Gallardon), 38, 39–41 Le Martyre de saint Eustache (Desfontaines): and aesthetics of rapture, 58, 140n89; and appearance of an angel, 56–58; and the brazen bull, xxii, 45, 46, 49–51, 54, 55, 56, 59, 60, 61; and Christian spectacles (spectacula christiana), 54; and conversion, 49, 54, 59, 60, 100; and legend of Eustache, 47–48, 49, 61; and martyrdom of Eustache and his family, 45, 49–50, 52, 54–57, 59,

I N D E X

60, 61; and the miraculous, 59, 61; and performance of at Hôtel de Bourgogne, 8, 47; and performance of in Nantes and Dijon, 9; and remorse of tyrant Adrian, 51–55, 56, 58, 59, 60; and sanctity, 61; and stage machinery, 33, 49, 58, 61; and total spectacle, 54, 59; and transfiguration, 60; and transformation of horror into beauty, 54; and transformation of pain into pleasure, xxii, 54–56, 60; and use of music, 33, 49, 54, 57, 58, 60, 61; and violation of the three unities, 47; and wonder, 59 Martyre de sainct Vincens (Gallardon), 38–39, 41 martyrological theater: and baptism of blood, 99–100; and bearing witness to faith, 33; and belief, xviii; and bodily suffering and violence, 32, 33, 38–41, 49; and the Christian sacred, xx–xxi, 14; and Corneille’s Polyeucte, xxiii, 8, 17, 92–94, 98–104; and Dipné, Infante d’Irlande (Avre), 10–11; and entertainment, xix, 36, 94; and filial love and charity, 72; and hagiography, xix, 10; and limits of Aristotelian dramatic theory, xx– xxi; and martyrdom, xvi, xxviii, 10–11, 32, 45; and Martyre de la glorieuse sainte Reine d’Alize (Ternet), 11–12; and martyrological tragedy, xvi–xviii, 8, 11, 33, 45, 72, 88–89, 99, 100; and neoclassical dramatic theory, xix, 10, 49; and Parisian stage, 41, 49; and persecuted innocents, 47; and plays of Gallardon, 38–41; and Regina plays, 9–12; and Roman gladiatorial spectacle and theater, 33; and sanctity, xix, xviii, xxi; and spectacle, xviii, xxii; and torture, 94, 101–102, 104; and transformation of pain into pleasure, xxii. See also Le Martyre de saint Eustache (Desfontaines); Le Véritable saint Genest (Rotrou) martyrs: and bearing witness to faith, 32, 33, 45, 99; and blood, xii, xiii, xvi, 11, 33, 35, 92, 99–100, 103–104, 105–106, 120; bodies of, 107; and bodily suffering, xix, xxii, 32, 33, 36–41, 49, 61, 101; and Christian martyrs, xiii, xix–xx, 10, 33, 35–37, 39, 45, 49, 51, 57–58, 60, 62, 68–69, 111–12, 121; and death of Jesus Christ, 35, 36; deaths of, 33, 35–36, 46, 49, 54, 59, 62, 104, 121; Erasmus, 36–37; Eustachius, xvi, 10, 45–47, 49, 51, 54; and faith in God, 56; and Genesius as patron of entertainers, 62–63; and heaven, 56; and the Incarnation, 120; and miracles, 30, 32; Néarque, 92, 101–102, 145–46n1, 146n8; and pathos, xxii; and

perseverance, xiii, 38, 101–102; Polyeuctus, xiii, 90, 92, 145–46n1, 146n2; and Roman Martyrology, xiii, 121; Saint Didymus, 121; Saint Genesius, xxii, 62–66, 68–69, 143n30, 145n86; Saint Mammes, 30; Saint Regina, 11; Saint Theodora, 121; and sanctity, 57, 59; staged portrayals of, xiv, 39, 123, 126; strength of, 111–12; as subjects of plays, xvii, 92–93, 123; suffering of, xiii, xxii, 32, 35–37, 38, 45, 46, 60–61, 92, 93, 136n15; and transformation into saints, 60; and transformation of pain into pleasure, 55–56, 60; Victor, 35–36, 135n2; Vincent, 38–39; and violence, 60–61; and women, 149n40. See also saints Maximes et refléxions sur la comédie (Bossuet), 35–36, 71 modernity, 21 Molière: and Desfontaines, 138n50; and devotional books, 26; Illustre Théâtre of, xvii, 47; persecution of, 3; and preface to Tartuffe, 5; and religious belief in Dom Juan and Tartuffe, 47; and replacing truth with fiction, 82; and secular stage, 125. See also Tartuffe (Molière) Montaigne, Michel de, 112 neoclassicism: and Aristotelian conventions, 49, 92, 114–15; and Corneille’s Polyeucte, xxiii, 90, 91, 92, 114; and devotional drama, xiii; and division of play into five acts, 10; and French theater, 3, 10, 12, 18, 124, 125, 126; and martyrological theater, xix, 90; and religion, xvi; and religious plays, xvii, xviii; and the three unities, 47, 90; and use of alexandrins, 10 Nicole, Pierre, xiv, 71, 123–24 On Virgins (Saint Ambrose), 121, 122 Plato, 71, xx Poësies chrestiennes (Godeau, Antoine): and Christianization of French theater, xi–xii; and poem about Eustathius, 46; and three eras of theater, xii Poetics (Aristotle): and action (praxis), 123; and the miraculous, 58–59; and moralizing interpretation of Aristotle, 132n64; and pathos, 37–38, 58–59, 136n23; and plausibility, 28; and roles of poet and historian, 20; and spectacle, xxii, 41, 42; and theater, xi, xx–xxi, 7, 20, 21, 114–15; and verisimilitude, 28 Poëtique (La Mesnardière), 42–43, 115 [ 169 ]

I N D E X

Polyeucte, martyr (Corneille), 146–47n13; and absence of portrayal of martyrdom, 91–94, 101, 102, 104–105, 107, 109, 119–20; author’s embellishments to plot of, 17, 98, 102–103, 108; and baptism, 98–100, 103–104; and character of Pauline, 116, 120; and character of Sévère, 108–14, 118, 119, 120, 152n82; and Christian tragedy, xvii, 11, 90–91, 97–98, 125; conversions in, xxiii, 17, 91–92, 93, 100–108, 109, 110, 113–14, 116–20; critique of, 14; and decorum, 91; and divine grace, 117; and faith, 105; and observation of three unities, 90; and Parisian stage, 124; and Pauline’s love relationship, 91, 109; and problem of belief linked with performance, 17; religious source of, 26, 90–91, 98; and religious tolerance, 108, 110–13, 152n85; and sacramental dynamics, 147n25; and sacramental efficacy, 120; sacramentality of, 93–94, 98–100, 101, 103–104, 120; and self-sacrifice, 98; and spectatorship, xxiii; success of, xvii, 90–91, 121; and the Théâtre du Marais, 47, 90, 94; and transubstantiation, 107, 108, 120 La Pratique du Théâtre (Aubignac), 6–7 Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, 12–14, 131n31 Racine, Jean: and Bérénice, 4; and Esther, xxi; and Jansenism, 148n28; Port-Royal education of, 96; and secular stage, 125; tragedies of, 11, 72, 96, 101 representation: and Aristotelian representation, 120; effects of, xxi, 15, 16, 100; and the Eucharist, 95–96, 120; of God and prophets, 13; and becoming, 92; and Incarnation, xxiii, 91; and martyrological theater, xviii–xix, xx, xxi, xxii, 38, 43, 59, 60–61, 100; and the miraculous, 59; and narrative structure, 20–21; and prospect of pleasure, 7, 34; and relationship between subject and object, 93–94; of religious plays, 7, 13–14; and rules against blood on stage, xxii, 32, 61; and sacramental culture of Catholic Church, 93–94; of the sacred, xx–xxi, 14–18, 24, 92; and sanctity, xxi, 27, 31, 59; and torture, 38–41; and tragedy, 78 Rhetoric (Aristotle), 27–29 Riccoboni, Luigi, 2, 3 Richelieu, Cardinal: as founder of Académie Française, xii; as a patron of theater, 6, 71 Rotrou, Jean, 76, 77–78, 79, 80–81, 83, 86–88. See also Le Véritable saint Genest (Rotrou) [ 170 ]

sacraments: and acting, 64, 68, 71, 85, 89; and baptism, 62, 67, 98–100, 103, 107; and the Eucharist, xviii, xxiii, 4, 67–68, 91, 93–97, 106, 107, 108, 120, 147n25; and representation, 13, 91, 95–96, 97, 147n25; and sacramental efficacy, xxiii, 67–68, 147n24; and sacramental theology, 67–68, 95–97, 148n38 Sainte Catherine (Serre), 14, 41, 49 Saint Eustache martyr (Baro), xvi, 8, 47 Saint-Evremond: as a Modern, 14; and relationship between Pauline and Sévère, 91; and sacred truths as seeming false, 15; and tragedy, 124 Saint-Jean, Léon de, 2, 4, 63, 65, 129n5, 141n6 saints: in the 17th century, 30–31, 90; and conversion, 118, 119; cult of, 8, 25, 30–31, 36, 46–47, 90, 124; deaths of, 16, 123; and demotion of Saint Eustathius, 46; and devotional books, 26; and hagiographical panegyrics, 48; and martyrdom, xvi, 48, 123; Nearchus, xii, 145–46n1; Polyeuctus, xii, xiii, 16, 27, 55, 90, 119, 145–46n1; Regina, 9–12, 31; representation of, 13–18, 27, 126; Saint Catherine, xii, 39–41, 49, 90, 143n30; Saint Cecilia, 63, 86, 141n5; Saint Didymus, 121; Saint Dipné, 10–11; Saint Eustachius, xii, xvi, xxii, 45–49, 90, 139n65, 139n68; Saint Genesius, 62–70, 83–89, 90, 124–25, 131n38, 145n77; Saint Genevieve, 31; Saint Mammes, 30, 31; Saint Regina, 90; Saint Sebastian, 16; Saint Theodora, 121–23, 153n2; Saint Victor, 33, 61, 135n2; Saint Vincent, xii, 38–39; and sanctity, xiv, xv, 16, 26, 27, 31; staged portrayals of, xiv, 16, 122–23, 124; suffering of, 49; and suffering of the damned, 136n13; as wonders, 30–31; worship of, 25. See also Augustine, Saint; hagiographical theater; martyrs Scudéry, Georges, 18–19, 64–65, 74–77, 80, 82 secularization, xxi–xxii, 3, 5–6, 21–22, 124 Senault, Jean-François: as an antitheatrical writer, xiv; and belief in sacred truths, 30, 31; and Genesius legend, 67; and potential for salvation, 63–64; sermons of, 47 Sévigné, Madame de, 3–4 spectacle: and Aristotelian theory, 137n32; and Christian spectacles (spectacula christiana), 32, 33, 34, 45, 48, 54, 61, 63, 65, 135n4, 136n12; and conflict with language, 59; and conversion, 32, 35, 45, 54, 60, 85–86; and early modern reformers, 32–33; and effects of on the spectator, 44–45, 124, 135n7, 142n26; and emotional effects,

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42–43, 137n32; and excessive theatricality, 85–86; and exclusion from poet’s work, 41; and horror leading to disbelief, 44; and the Incarnation, 35; and martyrological theater, xviii, xxii, 32–61, 49, 88–89, 92; and martyrs’ bodily suffering, 32, 49; and pathos, 37; and poetic faith, 19, 44; power of, 43, 44–45; and presence of stage elements, 42; role of, xxi, 109; and Roman gladiatorial spectacle and theater, 34; and sanctity, 32– 33; and the Second Coming of Christ, 34; shock of, 43; and On Spectacles (Tertullian), 34–35; and tension with plot, 58; and total spectacle, 49, 59, 86; and use of music, 60, 61; and visual violence, 37, 38, 43 spectatorship: and audience, 5, 15, 61, 86, 87; and belief, 16, 147n18; and Christian spectacles (spectacula christiana), 45; and Corneille’s Polyeucte, xxiii; and exploitation of by the early church, 34; of God, 33; and “lust of the eyes,” 34, 135n6; and martyrological theater, 33–36; and poetic faith, 15, 24; and power of theatrical illusion, 79–80; and risk of sacrilege, 16; and Tertullian, 34–35; and total spectacle, 86 Street, J. S., xviii, 90–91, 138n47 Tartuffe (Molière), 5, 26, 82 Tertullian: and baptism of blood, 99, 100; on the blood of martyrs, 92, 111, 138n57; as a Church Father, 134n89; and entertainment in Christian history, 48; and On the Flesh of Christ, 28–30; and the Incarnation, 29, 30, 66; and medieval drama, 135n4; and paganism, 151n77; and On Spectacles, 34–35, 129n4, 135n8; and term “apology,” 70; and theater as the seat of sin, 6, 13 theater: and adaptations of saints’ lives, 26–27, 68; and adaptations of scriptural texts, 25; and anthroplological theater criticism, 24; as anti-Christian propaganda, 69; and Aristotelian catharis, xv; and Aristotelian dramatic poetics, xix, xx–xxi; benefit of, xv, 64, 79, 144n61; and Christian theater, 65, 121; and delivery (actio), 78, 80, 85; and development of modern theater, xix; and development of opera, 140n89; and devotional plays, xvii, 10–12; and differentiation between real and feigned, xxiii, 66; and dramatic theory, xxii, 6–7; efficacy of, 68, 126; and entertainment, 5, 79, 94, 125; and faith, 8; and hagiographical theater, xix, xv–xvi, xvii, 31; and imitation of reality, 73; and Incarnation, xxiii; and the irrational,

58–59; and Jesuits, xiii; and linkage of to theory, 41–42; and martyrological theater, xvii, xviii–xix, 32–41, 45; and the miraculous, 58; and music, 6–7; and mystery plays, xii, xiii, 6, 39, 47; and “On Theater” (Godeau), xiv–xv; and origin of the word, 41–42; and performance, 24, 41, 42; and playwrights’ purposes, xviii; and poetic faith, xxii, 22–24; and Protestantism, 147n24; and relationship with religion, xix, xvi, xxii–xxiii, 2–3, 6–7, 67–68, 71; and religious subjects, 25; and religious theater, xvii–xix, xx–xxi, xxii, 5–9, 63–72, 140n89; and ritual origins, xii, xxi, 5, 6–7; and Roman gladiatorial spectacle and theater, 33, 34; and sacramental theology, 95–96; and the sacred, 7, 67; and sanctity, xv, xvii, xxi, 8; and the secular, 67; and self-sacrifice, 94–95, 98; and separation from church, xv, xxi, 7–9; and seventeenth century apologies, 74–76; and Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus, 7; spectacular nature of, 75–76; as vehicle for salvation, 89; and wonder, 117–18. See also actors; French theater; representation; spectacle theaters: and the Hôtel de Bourgogne, xvi, xxi, 1–3, 6, 8, 47, 63, 150n57; and Molière’s company, 47; and the Palais Cardinal, 6; and provincial theaters, xiii, 9, 10; and the Théâtre du Marais, xvi, 3, 6, 10, 47, 90, 94, 121; Théodore, vierge et martyre (Corneille): and character of Theodora, 122–23; and companies in the provinces, 130n21; failure of, 9, 121, 122, 124, 125, 127n4, 153– 54n10; and prostitution, 121–22, 127n4; and saints’ lives and martyrdom, 121 torture, 38–41, 50–51, 54–55, 62, 69, 90. See also martyrological theater tragedy: and action, 123; and actors, 115, 137n32; and Aristotelian theory, 78, 114–15, 137n32; and audience, 79, 80; and blend of Christian and pagan elements, 19; and Christian tragedy, xiii, xiv, xvii, 14, 19, 51, 60, 90–91, 121, 128n11; and classical tragedy, xvii, 7, 90–91; as entertainment, 7; examples of good conduct in, 79; and hagiographical tragedies, 47, 49, 125; and La Mort d’Agrippine (Bergerac), 4; and La Pucelle d’Orléans (Aubignac), 73; and Le Véritable saint Genest (Rotrou), 73, 81–82, 83; as a literary genre, 7, 10, 154n13; and martyrdom of Saint Genesius, 65; and martyrological theater, 94; and martyrological tragedy, xvi–xviii, xxii–xxiii, xxiii, 9–10, 92–94, 107, [ 171 ]

I N D E X

111; and the miraculous, 58–59; morality of, 71–72; and neoclassical tragedies, xviii; and Nicomède (Corneille), 117, 121; and passions, 35, 72; and pathos, 37, 43; and peripeteia, 37, 114; and Polyeucte, martyr (Corneille), xiii, xvii; and Polyeucte’s zeal, 145–46n1; and portrayal of love, 72; and Racine, 11, 72; and reason, 20–21; and relationship with religion, 6–7; and religious tragedy, xiv, xvii– xviii, 8, 59–60, 71–72; ritual origins of, 6–7; sacramentality of, 97–98; and Saint Genesius legend, 68–70; and Saint Regina plays, 9–10; and sanctity, 123; and scholastic tragedies, 71; and the secular, 126; and secular tragedy, 2, 72; and On Spectacles (Tertullian), 34; and spectacular stage effects, 41; and three unities,

[ 172 ]

47, 90; and torture, 94; and trope of the converted actor, xxii–xxiii; and use of music, 138n55; and verisimilitude, 20–21. See also Le Martyre de saint Eustache (Desfontaines); Polyeucte, martyr (Corneille) Le Véritable saint Genest (Rotrou): and acting, 73, 81–84, 86–89, 142n15; apologetic dimension of, 66, 69–70, 88; and conversion, 69, 81, 83–86, 88, 119; and imitation instead of becoming, 66, 81–83, 87, 88; and martyrdom, 86, 87–88; and Parisian stage, 124; and sacramental dynamics, xxiii; and Saint Genesius, 65, 68–69, 81–89; and theatrical illusion, 88–89; and transformation of pain into pleasure, 55

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher Semk is assistant professor of French at Yale University. He specializes in seventeenth-century French literature, especially theater, and the intersection of literature and religion.

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