Martyr Hermenegild
By: Sforza Pallavicino ; edited and translated by Stefano Muneroni
Series: Renaissance and reformation texts in translation -- 13
Publisher: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies
Published: 2019
Place of publication: Toronto
Language: eng
Translated from: fre
Number of pages: 105
ISBN-13: 9780772721976
Subjects: Drama
Work titles: Ermenegildo martire
Description: "Sforza Pallavicino's play Martyr Hermenegild (1644) is a masterpiece of seventeenth-century Jesuit hagiographical drama. It brings to the stage the last day in the life of Saint Hermenegild (d. 585), a Visigoth prince who rejected Arianism and converted to Catholicism, much to the displeasure of his father King Levigild who condemned him to death for such apostasy. Resolute in his new faith to the very end, Hermenegild dies a martyr's death and ascends in glory to heaven. The play, complete with a cross-dressed character used to circumvent the Jesuit order's ban on women actors on stage, is a brilliant example of the so-called Aristotelian unities and Jesuit pedagogical goals. While Stefano Muneroni's learned introduction offers readers an insightful overview of Sforza Pallavicino's life, Pallavicino's own postscript to the play elucidates the author's views on theatre, its rules, and its functions as a pedagogical tool. This first ever English translation of Pallavicino's play and post-script fills a gap in existing scholarship on Jesuit theatre by providing readers with an important primary source that will help to contextualize research and illustrate the profound pedagogical and artistic contributions of the Society of Jesus to theatre in early modern Europe."--
Notes: A play.

Translation of: Ermenegildo martire.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 103-105).

Issued also in electronic format.