Читать книгу Fruits of the Cross - Robert L. Kendrick - Страница 14

CHAPTER 2

Devotional Strategies

In addition to the visual context and the dramatic background, current piety conditioned the pieces’ meaning. The topics were not confined to the postburial mourning of Christ, but entailed meditative trajectories on the entire process of redemption, from the Incarnation through the Cross. Since the libretti were both commemorative and didactic, they had to adumbrate the need for, and efficacy of, the Passion. Given that little of the entire Viennese oratorio repertory addressed Christ’s death directly—and with the silent but overwhelming presence of His Body on display in the Tomb during the performances—the pieces were also to explain the reasons for His sacrifice in the first place.¹ And they had to be couched in terms meaningful to the royals, beginning with a little-known but important part of court ideology.

THE ECONOMICS OF REDEMPTION

Like sepulchral culture and Passion devotion in general, the repertory stands at the intersection of soteriology (the theology of salvation) and justification theory. But its vocabulary also invoked ideas of price and exchange in early modern Europe, even if its background is that of classical explanations of redemption. Beyond the reaffirmation of Anselm’s idea of the Passion as satisfaction for sin, codified in the early discussions at the Council of Trent, Catholic understandings of the medieval saint’s treatise Cur Deus homo? placed the reconciliation of divine justice and mercy precisely in the Cross. With the addition of Aquinas’s emphasis on Christ’s free self-sacrifice, and its reiteration using His Blood as the fluid of salvation, a general consensus was set out in chapter 2 of the 1547 Tridentine “Decree on Justification.”

Within that framework, however, different emphases on satisfaction for original sin could circulate. The degree to which Christ’s death placated God, and ultimately the need for the Incarnation-Passion, was expressed in the repertory via formulations of restitution and price, as found in Minato’s Sette consolationi (1670). Here Giustizia Divina enters in scene 2 by describing herself in the third person, metrically echoing the versi sciolti with which the grieving Virgin had opened the piece (see chapter 3):

S’havea di sodisfarsi; / la Giustitia Divina; / era dover così, l’oggetto offeso / se riguardar si deve, / infinita è la colpa /del transgressor Adamo, / che l’infinito suo fattor offese: / e redimer potea / sol de la trina, ed indivisa essenza / Una persona eterna; / l’huomo caduto al pricipizio rio; / che infinito non è, se non Iddio. // Divine Justice had to be satisfied; it was necessary if the “offended object” is considered. The sin of Adam transgressing was infinite, he who offended his infinite Maker. Only an eternal Person of the threefold and undivided Essence could redeem humanity, fallen from the evil precipice; for the only Infinite is God.²

Beyond traditional satisfaction theory, though, the various exchanges present in redemption and sinners’ reactions—for example, guilt for tears, or Christ’s Body for Adam’s sin—took on special weight in Leo­pold’s court, given the rise of mercantilist thought in economics and its local Viennese exponents. Such thinkers in court circles as Johann Joachim Becher, P.W. von Hörnigk, and Wilhelm von Schröder favored internal trade, the development of an urban mercantile class, and modern financial administration. Outside economics, their ideas also had an impact on ceremonial language and behavior at court, for all that the expenses on music theater and staging might have seemed “irrational” from a monetarist perspective.³ Thus the libretti’s inclusion of payment, prices, and balance showed the presence of both the scholastic and the modern in court discourse. Becher’s own eclectic theology, drawing variously from hermeticism and from the contemporary spirituality of Cardinal Giovanni Bona, also suggests another link between the lexical fields of exchange and soteriology.⁴ In addition, the openness of Catholic anti-Machiavellian thought toward trade (particularly in the political theorist Giovanni Botero, whose ideas had framed Habsburg claims to sovereignty) added weight to this discursive use.

The first transaction to come up in the libretti was that of sinners’ debt. In the 1661 La Gara, it was expressed in terms of how much humanity owed to justice. After Giuda’s exit to suicide, in scene 8 Misericordia addresses the three remaining figures (Pietro, Longino, and the Centurione) to induce penance. Then Giustizia, armed and furious, reappears, as pitch organization switches in a sharp direction, from G mollis to G durus, and when Misericordia attempts to claim the trio for herself, Giustizia trumps her by pointing to their status: “each one of them is a true debtor to me of tears and pain.” With a sudden lurch toward even sharper pitch regions (on E), the sinners move to comply: “The disbursement of tears from our pain will be made to you, like cash at the bank of the Earth.”⁵ Giustizia accepts this promise with another change in pitch center, moving to C durus, and essentially the contest of justice and mercy is over, resolved dialogically and tonally by the differing remorse of each sinner.

Even before, payment had come up in the closing madrigale of the 1660 Il Sagrifizio, as Caldana put it in halting verse: “From our eyes, let us pay out the heart’s capital in coins of flowing tears, nor let any penitent greedily hold on to them; pardon can be bought only with these pearls [margarite=“tears”].”⁶ Minato’s 1678 piece for Eleonora, I Tre chiodi di Christo, begins with Redeemed Humanity joyfully shedding its chains, but then being instructed as to the price of the transaction by Catholic Piety: “How much this your fate cost Jesus: thorns, whips, nails, the Cross, and death…. Humanità Redenta: Catholic Piety, you move me to tears; I would almost say that it pains me that my Redeemer bought me back from the Devil’s eternal slavery, if the price of my salvation is so great.”

But it was in the Friday 1685 libretto (Draghi’s score is not preserved) that Minato rang all possible changes on redemption’s value, starting with his characteristically artificial and self-abnegating preface: “Reader, yesterday [the Thursday sepolcro] you gave me a large capital of sympathy for my Bevanda di fiele; today I seek to pay you with my Prezzo dell’humana redentione…. The price that I present you is Christ’s Blood, of infinite worth.”

This piece featured one of Burnacini’s more complex designs, which moved the garden where the Tomb was traditionally located back on to Calvary (one drawing, Vienna, Theatermuseum, Min. 29/58b2, seems partially related, but some important details differ). Above the Crucifixion’s hill was the Cherub who expelled Adam from Eden, and in the heights of Burnacini’s set, the typical glory (an earlier version of this design, without the Cherub, had been used for the 1677 L’Infinità impicciolita). Its unusual cast of characters included four symbolic figures linked to redemption (Humanità Redenta again, Amor Divino, Misericordia Eterna, and Pentimento) along with three angels past or present: the Cherub, Lucifero, and a Guardian Angel, the last of whom begins the piece by releasing Humanità from the chains in which Lucifer leads her: “Drop these chains, get out of here, rebellious spirit! Lucifero: Have I lost my spoils? I, made utterly weak?” This echoes the seemingly optimistic opening of I Tre chiodi, and the four characters continue until Amor Divino and Misericordia Eterna appear out of nowhere in the Glory, narrating the events of salvational history with jabs at Lucifer. Finally, Pentimento arrives, eventually causing the Devil to flee entirely and offering the material means of a penitent life—namely and obviously, the Cross—to Humanità.

Rather than hammering away at price, the underlying conceit of the piece, Minato held back until all the details of redemption had been sung. Then Pentimento’s two-stanza aria brought it back in: “(1) Weep, weep, never cease your weeping at Christ’s Feet; in giving your tears, you give little to Him Who gave His Blood for you. (2) Jesus shed His Blood from the five rivers [a gesture to the Five Wounds devotion], but for weeping you have only two eyes, miserable one, and nothing else. Cherubino: Redeemed Humanity, you cost so much to your Lord, and yet you are subject to only a small tax. a4: Penance and sorrow cost you nothing.” After Pentimento departs and returns with a crucifix, the final madrigale returns to the metaphor, leaving the Cross behind: “O human, you are earth, but you cost so much to Heaven.” This battle over just payment had an uncanny echo in Leopold’s fiscal policy for the imperial estates, subjected to levies that Vienna deemed necessary and which the nobility rejected as excessive.

Even in the more hermetic libretti of the 1690s, the trope continued to function: the Apocalyptic Il Libro con sette sigilli of 1694, a piece set in remarkably sharp tonal areas, opens with a duet between Il Dolore del Cuore Più Appassionato di Tutti i Cuori and L’Amor di Christo (“The Pain of the Most Passionate Heart of All” and “Christ’s Love”), an opening like that of the 1697 La Virtù della Croce discussed in this study’s introduction.⁷ Then three other unusual symbolic characters appear: La Pietà di Chi Diede il Velo per Coprire la Nudità di Christo in Croce; Lo Sguardo Pietoso di Christo a Pietro; and L’Aiuto del Cireneo (respectively “The Piousness of Him Who Gave the Sheet to Cover Christ’s Nudity on the Cross”; “Christ’s Merciful Glance at Peter”; and “The Help of [Simon] the Cyrenian”); these are all “second-order” figures of allegory discussed presently. For all their unusual conceptualist nature, Pietà and Sguardo open with a commonplace of mercantilist discourse: “The immortal descended to redeem the mortal; / Such a great price was paid for humans, who are worth nothing.”⁸

THE PERSONAE OF ALLEGORY

The presence of such symbolic figures throughout the repertory is no surprise, coming as it does from the rappresentazione tradition. As noted, they also crop up, much more briefly, in the prologues of the Viennese opera and serenata repertory. That such roles elsewhere could have convincing musical depictions even later is evident in Alessandro Scarlatti’s output, for instance, the five allegorical figures found in his 1715 Oratorio della Santissima Trinità.

But the Viennese novelty consisted of innovative choices for allegorical personages in both Sbarra’s and Minato’s libretti, and the use of second-order allegory in the latter’s. I have coined this latter term for characters that embody only one aspect of a human or biblical personage, for instance, Il Merito di Christo and Il Peccato d’Adamo//The Merit of Christ and Adam’s Sin, both found in the 1686 Friday piece Il Dono della vita eterna, or the just-mentioned trio from the 1694 Il Libro. Minato began to use them in the Thursday 1671 Epitaffi sopra il sepolcro (e.g., “L’Humanità di Christo”), then in 1672’s Il Paradiso aperto (“L’Humiltà della Beata Vergine,” who presents herself at the Father’s feet for intercession). Strikingly, the latter piece thus features both Mary and her Humility among its characters, a remarkable externalization of inner personality.⁹

In 1682’s Il Terremoto, this abstraction is extended to features of allegorical characters, in this case Il Lume della Scienza and Il Lume della Fede (“The Light of Knowledge/Faith”). The 1696 La Passione di Christo features four straight allegorical roles (mentioned earlier: Contemplatione, Memoria, Intelletto, and Voluntà), plus Il Giubilo degli Angeli, Lo Stupore degli Huomini, and Il Terror dell’Inferno, the last three—The Angels’ Rejoicing; The Amazement of Humans; The Terror of Hell—here all figures of affect. The practice returned in Cupeda’s 1701 Song of Songs sepolcro, Il Fascietto di mirra, combining biblical roles with symbolic ones, although it is entirely absent from the post-Leopold works, a testimony to the waning power of allegory in the new century and new regime.

In Cupeda’s libretto (M.A. Ziani’s score does not survive), two different allegorical traditions for the canticle’s Sponsa combine, and it is striking that neither is Marian. The cast list gives the female spouse as representing the Church Militant, and thus in the ecclesiological tradition of interpretation, but the preface explains the title’s “bundle of myrrh,” taken from the Song, as the “figure of the Redeemer’s Passion, to be held between the breasts, that is between the soul’s two powers,” and thus in individual or tropological understanding. A devotional tract published in Rome the previous autumn, La sublime contemplazione e sicura pace in Christo Giesù crocefisso, by the Discalced Carmelite Onorio dell’Assunta (G.C. Guidetti, 1639–1716), had seized on precisely this verse (Cant 1:12) as a symbol for the believer’s own contemplation of the Crucifixion.¹⁰

In line with Minato’s explanations of the previous decade, Cupeda also gave an ekphrastic description of the sepolcro’s staging:

The set will represent a garden of lilies and other flowers. Midstage there will be a small hill with a myrrh tree, near which there will be the canticle’s Sponsa, who will have in her breast a myrrh bunch, the figure of Christ’s Passion, with a motto: My beloved is a myrrh bundle to me; He will remain between my breasts. [NB: Cant 1:12]. Jerusalem’s virgins will surround her, presenting her with flowers and apples, expressing the Passion. In the distance the canticle’s Sponsus will be seen, a figure of Christ, climbing a palm tree, with a motto: I shall climb a palm tree and pluck its fruit. [NB: Cant 7:8]

The piece opens with the Sponsa, the three cardinal virtues, and a penitent sinner, all paraphrasing various Canticle verses while making the link between the palm tree and the Cross; one of Burnacini’s drawings seems related to the scene as given by Cupeda.¹¹ The female spouse then cites the parable of the vineyard (Matthew 21, etc.) in Passion context, and Carità calls her the vine planted by God the Father, using an interpretation from Ludolph of Saxony’s Vita Christi that also contains a swipe at Jewish “guilt” via the Tenebrae Responsory Vinea mea electa. After having ignored the Tomb thus far, the Sponsa then turns to it in a deictic gesture, leading to the appearance of the second-order figures L’Amore di Giovanni, La Penitenza di Pietro, and La Disperatione di Giuda (“John’s Love”; “Peter’s Penitence”; “Judas’s Despair”). This scene recalls the interactions of Peter and Judas from the texts of the 1660s, and here their “derivative” nature seems to distill their characters for dramatic expediency (they enter only two-thirds of the way through, and without the “Chi sei tu?” dialogues of recognition typical of earlier texts).