Religion

The issue of religion presented Renaissance playwrights with the challenge of drawing a Christian audience into the pagan world of ancient theater. Undoubtedly, audiences would tend to withhold their sympathy from characters who placed their faith in multiple and often petty and promiscuous deities. Even the most

Sophisticated and tolerant spectators would understandably, and perhaps unwittingly, persist in regarding the stage action as the representation of a distant world bearing little resemblance to their own. Most dramatists opted to endow pagan gods with Christian attributes, thus preserving the ancient atmosphere while dramatizing a notion of deity closer to their own. Mythological characters populating Renaissance tragedies naturally appeal to immortal beings such as Apollo, Artemis, and Zeus; however, these appeals are in a different key from the religious sentiments expressed by the source characters. In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, for example, Oedipus does not implore divine help; he simply laments the gods’ cruelty and lack of compassion. He blames Apollo for bringing ‘‘my evil sufferings to completion’’ (1330), sees himself as ‘‘the most cursed, and furthermore the most hateful of mortals to the gods’’ (1345-46), and feels ‘‘detested by the gods’’ (1519). This view of an unpropitious and even hostile deity contrasts sharply with the reverential tone in which Anguillara’s Edippo mentions the name of God. He is happy and thankful that ‘‘by the grace of God’’ his sons have been model children, and exhorts them to harbor in their hearts ‘‘the fear of God,’’ to follow the example of their ‘‘saintly’’ mother, and to perform virtuous deeds that are ‘‘pleasing to God’’ (1.2). And finally, with exquisite dramatic irony, he prays: ‘‘May God send His ire, His vengeance/ against those who with their own flesh and blood/seek to satisfy their incestuous lust’’ (1.2, p. 19).

Lest these pious allusions be seen as isolated instances peculiar to individual characters, let us consider the religious beliefs professed by various choruses, keeping in mind that the chorus tends to reflect the concerns and the ethos of the stage audience and often the author’s point of view. In Anguillara’s Edippo, both male and female choruses articulate through their prayers a notion of the divine that is fundamentally Christian. They invoke the ‘‘Holy Spirits’’ in Heaven, appeal to the ‘‘Father of Heaven... God Omnipotent’’ to manifest his ‘‘Holy Will’’ (2.3), and believe that ‘‘only those who rely on God’’ may count on a propitious outcome (3.5). On the eve of the battle between Eteocles and Polynices, the people of Thebes beg God to intercede, and vow to fast until sundown. At the same time, men and women from various choruses plead with the King of Heaven on their knees and kiss the ground as a sign of humility and helplessness (4.3). Expressions of religious ardor, such as fasting, genuflecting, and kissing the ground, are clear markers of Christian worship.

While such conventions suggest that the deity informing the world of cinquecento tragedy was basically Christian, they should not be seen as evidence that Renaissance dramatists attempted to convert the mythological world to Christianity. They simply sought to ‘‘clothe’’ the old with the new, without ever intending for the modern to blot out the ancient from which they drew both inspiration and prestige. They aimed for a theatrical representation in which the new existed alongside the old, a representation that would speak to their contemporaries with the authority of the ancients. One is not surprised to find Christian and pagan terms used interchangeably, and often in the same sentence. In Anguillara’s Edippo, where references to Dio and Giove appear side by side, the chorus refers to the high priests as i santi servi di Giove [the holy servants of Jupiter] (4, p. 108). And while Rucellai’s Oreste professes beliefs that could easily be considered Christian both in tone and substance, his sister Ifigenia identifies herself as the daughter of a direct descendant of Jupiter, ‘‘King of humans and father of the Gods’’ (Oreste 1.261-62), and swears by ‘‘that Goddess I so much adore’’ (2.169).

The two religions never merge into a single notion of the divine and are generally associated with specific dramatic roles. Usually the chorus and helpless victims tend to invoke a deity that is essentially Christian; villains and fearsome tyrants, in contrast, appeal to the more earthly gods of mythology. Thus, in Dolce’s Thieste (1543), the ferocious Atreus calls on the gods of revenge, while the grieving Thieste pleads with a compassionate deity (celeste pietate, p. 28) to end his suffering. Spectators must have instinctively feared and rejected the world of violence that Atreus and his vengeful gods represent. Conversely, they must have sympathized with Thieste, since they believed in the same caring and just deity. They also shared the chorus’s belief that God’s justice, though late in coming, will not leave unpunished Atreus’ unspeakable crime: ‘‘The High Maker of the world/just and loving God,/shall never let go/ without just revenge/this evil sin’’ (5.5). The religious essence of this conviction is particularly relevant when compared with the notion of the divine prevailing in the Senecan source, where the gods have vanished and Thyestes is left to experience his tragedy all alone. His heartrending plea to the gods is more a cry of despair than a true act of faith in divine assistance: ‘‘You too, you gods, wherever you have fled, hear what a deed is done!’’ (Thyestes 5.1069-70).

What was the essence of the deity invoked by the Renaissance mythological characters, since the Dio or the Giove they worship may refer to the Christian God as well as to a pagan deity? In the literary tradition, it was not unusual for Christian authors to invoke the powers of the gods or refer to the Christian Godhead as Jove without ever implying belief in the ancient deities. Petrarchist poetry in particular is awash with references to mythological divinities, such as Apollo, Diana, Juno, Mars, Minerva, and Venus. The practice was so common that some modern scholars have viewed it as yet another pagan element of the age. In reality, the poets invoked the gods not as divine beings but as literary topoi meant to evoke the prestige of the ancients. Suffice it to recall that Dante in the Divine Comedy, the most Christian of poems, did not hesitate to invoke the gods of Homer and Vergil or refer to Christ as ‘‘Highest Jove’’ (Purgatory 6.118).