Musae Benedictinae Salisburgenses (MBS)

Research project P 13830 Musae Benedictinae Salisburgenses (MBS) Gerhard PETERMANN 28.06.1999 In 1617 Archbishop Marcus Sitticus founded a gymnasium in Salzburg, intended as a first step towards tile founding of a University, and the Benedictine University itself was ceremonially inaugurated in 1622 Latin dramas were regularly performed from 1617, for the last time in 1778, when the last "Pater comicus" laid down his office. During those 167 years, so far as we know, 592 dramas were written and performed. Of these, 66 printed texts and 1331 (not always complete) manuscripts survive. The wide-ranging connections of the patres to other South German cloisters suggest that further texts may well be discovered. Places of performance, staging-techniques and musical presentations are well documented. On the other hand examination of the language, content, historical motivation, literary criticism and contemporary reception of this Neo-Latin theatre, so important for the education of ist time, are totally absent. Yet this Neo-Latin drama was not only a social event, and thus important for the social history of the time, but it was first and foremost firmly embedded in the educational philosophy and curricula of the newly founded university - a university rapidly acquiring supra-regional importance. The research project submitted thus aims to supply tile gaps in our knowledge in the following representative area, viz., the relatively large and coherent complex of Latin dramas on matters and themes of Greek and Roman history and mythology in the extant text corpus. Following a detailed 3-stage plan, research will be carried out and published on linguistic, literary and dramaturgical phenomena, as well as on contemporary reception. Important dramas of high quality - with priority for hitherto unpublished dramatic texts of the important Austrian baroque poet Simon Rettenbacher - will be edited and translated, with commentaries- The three-year project is intended on the one hand to contribute to a deeper knowledge of the Salzburg Latin Barocktheatre of the Benedictine Order over its more than hundred year existence, and on the other to throw light oil the reception of the classics and on Neolatinism in Austria in the l7th and 18th centuries.

In 1622 the first University of Salzburg was founded by the Benedictines. From that year on till 1778 all University festivities included theatrical performances, mainly in Latin language. Those dramas are of signifiance for literary history, not only as the characteristic feature of local writing in late Renaissance and Baroque but also at a supraregional level as a particular form of Ordensdrama. Today we know of nearly 600 dramas. 200 of them have been preserved, but had so far not been examined by latinists. This challenge was faced by the research project MBS - Musae Benedictinae Salisburgenses, named after a designation for the Benedictine actors` groups. Special attention was focused on the role of antiquity within this type of theatre. The wealth of material required that the research was confined to mythological themes. The study of a representative selection of texts has led to first critical editions and studies related to both particular and overlapping topics. For special qualities of the art of Simon Rettenpacher (17 th c.), like the inclusion of allegorical scenes in historical dramas or the modelling on Renaissance satires in his juvenilia, were described for the first time in the course of the research project, within a supraregionally comparing study and a commented edition, though Rettenpachers work had already been known before. Musicologists examined the setting of several dramas, not least because it had been undertaken by celebrities as H.I. Biber, Michael Haydn and W.A. Mozart. Yet Rufin Widl`s drama `Clementia Croesi (18 th c.), which included young Mozart`s `Apollo et Hyacinthus` and forms a Gesamtkunstwerk together with the opera, was for the first time examined, translated and edited within the research project MBS. Mozart also made famous the vow of Idomeneus, the king of Crete. The researchers of the project studied this motiv, but in the earlier Christian adaptation written by the Benedictine monk Marian Wimmer. Further critical studies on dramas (Damon et Pythias, Siventus, Synorix et Camma compared to Thomas Corneille), studies on Demetrios as a topic as well as general studies on the role of myth in Salzburg Benedictine drama are results of the project, presented in editions and at workshops and conferences (Salzburg, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Germany and Belgium). On May 13th 2003 students of the University Mozarteum performed Widl`s `Clementia Croesi` and Mozart`s `Apollo et Hyacinthus` in the original version of May 13th 1767 for a broader audience. In 2002 parts of Wimmer`s `Idomeneus, Cretensium rex` (1764) were put on stage on the occasion of an interdisciplinary symposion concerning Baroque culture in Salzburg.