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CHAPTER ONE
THE JESUIT USE OF THE DRAMATIC ARTS

To properly understand the Jesuit use of the dramatic arts, one must also understand the Jesuits themselves: who they are, and what their purpose is. Although this is a huge subject in itself, one of this author’s previous books is entitled, The Jesuits: the Secret Army of the Papacy , ³ which is a concise study of these very issues; and what follows at the beginning of this chapter is taken from that book, to provide the reader with some vital information about the Jesuits and their goals. This information is then followed by the study of their use of the dramatic arts.

The Origin of the Jesuits

The Jesuit Order originated with Ignatius de Loyola, bom in 1491, a Spanish basque who became a fanatical Romanist after living a debauched life as a soldier, claiming to have had visions of God and of Mary. He eventually wrote The Spiritual Exercises, which was to become the Jesuits’ textbook.

He founded the so-called “Society of Jesus” in 1534, with a small band of friends. The Roman pope, Paul III, issued a bull approving (and thus officially “founding”) the Jesuits as a religious order of the Roman Catholic “Church”. But here a most important fact must be carefully noted, for it throws such light on the real nature of the Society: Loyola established the Society before it received papal approval! The little band of men who made up the Society at its inception in 1534 vowed to obey Loyola, as the general of the organisation, before they ever went to the pope! It was not Loyola’s original intention to submit his Society to the pope, but only to himself as its general. He had ambitions of his own. Only if he found it absolutely necessary did Loyola intend to seek papal approval for the Society.

Ever since its founding, then, the Society has been totally dedicated, first and foremost, not to the pope, but to the Jesuit General. The Jesuits are a law unto themselves. While outwardly acknowledging the authority of the pope of Rome, their real allegiance is to the Jesuit general. All orders come from the general; even the pope’s instructions are only passed on if the general sees fit. It is not surprising that the Jesuit general came to be known as the “black pope”. ⁴

Naturally enough, when Loyola approached Paul III, the latter had strong reservations. It was not difficult to discern that men swearing absolute obedience to their general would be independent of the Papacy and thus dangerous to it, even though they professed to be submissive to it. Loyola cunningly suggested that the Jesuits also take a vow of obedience to the pope, to go wherever he should send them; and Paul III agreed to this, and sanctioned the Society. ⁵ Yet, in practice, the Jesuits have never taken any notice of this vow. The pope is only obeyed when it suits them.

Their Purpose

What is the purpose of the Jesuit Order? Why does it exist?

It is quite simple: the Jesuits seek to convert the world to Roman Catholicism. ⁶ And in order to achieve this goal, they have not hesitated to use every means, both fair and foul – especially foul. They have not hesitated to lie, cheat, commit murder, or use revolution, if need be, to further their aims. At the very top of their priorities has always been the destruction of Protestantism. For the spiritual conflict must be discerned in all this: Satan’s ages-long war on the Church of the living God. For centuries, Rome has been the centre of Satan’s assault on the saints of God (Rev. 13:7; 17:1-6; 18:24; Dan. 7:25). Through the Inquisition and other means, the devil sought to wipe out the Church of Christ. Then, with the formation of the Jesuit Order in the sixteenth century, a new and deadly weapon was created to be used against biblical Christianity.

Their Indoctrination

The Spiritual Exercises, and the “Constitutions” of the Order, are used in the preparation of Jesuit recruits for their task.

The Spiritual Exercises work on the imagination of the candidate. Various biblical scenes are “relived” in front of him, beautiful ones alternating with frightening ones. His sighs, inhalings, breathing, and periods of silence are all noted down. After a number of weeks of this, he is ready for indoctrination. ⁷

Obedience is absolutely vital to the Jesuit Order. Every Jesuit must be in total obedience to his superior, obeying him without question. In the Constitutions of the Order, it is repeated some 500 times that the Jesuit must see in the general, not a fallible man, but Christ himself! This was said by a professor of Roman Catholic theology. ⁸ In the words of Ignatius: “We must see black as white, if the Church says so.”

The Jesuit probationer is required by the Constitutions to be as a corpse, able to be moved in any direction; striving to acquire perfect resignation and denial of his own will and judgment. ⁹ According to the Constitutions the Jesuit may even sin, if the superior commands it – for sin will not be sin in such a case! ¹⁰ In the “Society of Jesus”, there is a greater authority than the pope, and a greater authority (as far as the Jesuits are concerned) than God Himself – and that is the general. For what God has declared to be sin, the general can declare to be no sin. The Jesuits readily dispense with the laws of God, if it suits them. “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isa. 5:20).

It is precisely this type of abominable doctrine that has enabled the Jesuits to commit murders, depose kings, destroy governments, without any fear of divine punishment. “The end justifies the means”, is a fundamental, albeit unwritten, rule of the Jesuit Order. ¹¹

Never has a more fanatical and powerful Society existed upon the earth.

The Jesuits wasted no time, after the pope had approved of the Order, in involving themselves in everything: the education of the young, hearing of confessions, foreign missions, preaching. They went about their work with fanatical zeal.

Through education, they aimed to control the future leaders of society. They particularly sought to gain control of the education of the children of political leaders and other influential people in the upper classes. Through their leniency in the confessional they slithered into the affections of the wealthy and powerful. Through foreign missions, they sought to convert the world to Roman Catholicism.

Through preaching, they championed papal authority and other Roman Catholic doctrines, thereby strengthening the Papacy at a time when it was reeling from the devastating effects of the Reformation. This was known as the Counter-Reformation. The Council of Trent, in the 1540s, was Rome’s answer to the Reformation – and it was dominated by the Jesuits.

And – there was their use of the dramatic arts.

Jesuit Use of Theatre in Europe to Promote Roman Catholicism

Almost from the inception of the Jesuit Order in the sixteenth century, Jesuits were deeply involved in the theatre; and then once it was invented centuries later, in the movie industry as well. They knew that they could use “entertainment” to influence minds and change society itself – and they did. In fact, “The Jesuit stage played an important part in the evolution of the theatre, owing especially to the great prominence given to stage management and production.” ¹² And by the mid-twentieth century it could be said, truthfully: “we meet obvious traces of Jesuit influence in our present-day culture…. many traces of Jesuitic influence also remain in the theatre”. ¹³ These traces must be brought to light.

As early as 1565 – that is, less than three decades after their founding – Jesuits were writing and producing plays to help their students with their diction, gestures, and carriage. ¹⁴ In the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Order, much use was made of drama, so as to impress upon the Jesuit the truths which Ignatius was seeking to convey to all his followers. He desired for the imagination to be as much under his control as all other faculties of the student Jesuit, and he knew that drama could be powerfully utilised for this purpose. ¹⁵

The Jesuits saw the theatre as having a very great purpose in their schemes: to promote Jesuit religious propaganda to the masses! For in sixteenth-century Europe the theatre had begun to break free, to some extent, from what it had been up until then: a tool of the Roman Catholic religion. Roman Catholic religious passion plays and similar-themed theatrical productions were all that the masses had known. But things were changing, especially as stage actors from England began to arrive in Roman Catholic Europe to perform the plays of Shakespeare, and as the crude performances of German strolling players exposed Roman Catholics to the idea that theatrical performances could be used for purposes other than the religion of Rome. In addition, Martin Luther had started to use theatre to promote Lutheranism, and a decidedly anti- Papist drama school was developing in Lutheran Germany. The stage was therefore being increasingly used for both secular and Lutheran purposes. These developments were very dangerous for Rome, which the newly-formed Jesuit Order vowed to fight with all its might. What was needed, they believed, was a “theatrical Counter-Reformation”. ¹⁶ They had to establish Roman Catholic stage drama which would counter the anti-Papist effects of the theatre. They believed what was needed was to give the people quality stage productions that would outshine anything produced by the Protestants or the profane. And so, “Prom the very beginning, the Jesuits sought to fascinate the public with brilliant settings, scenic effects and complicated technical apparatus, and by these means to entice them from the wandering troupes of actors and the Protestant school theatres”. ¹⁷

Most especially, they knew, such stage productions had to appeal to the higher, ruling classes: the king, the nobility, the leading families of each nation. Accordingly they lost no time in establishing what they needed. And indeed, their dramas were noted for their special effects and set designs, which, for that time, were cutting-edge and very intricate. They made much use of dance as well, with ballet masters going from one Jesuit school to another. It was a deliberate strategy to make their own theatre and ballet productions more extravagant than the secular ones, so as to influence people of rank. ¹⁸

And it worked! It worked spectacularly. “Everywhere, large audiences attended the Jesuits’ performances. In Vienna, the number of spectators amounted to as many as three thousand, while, in 1737 at Hildesheim, the city police had to be called in to keep back the public. The effect of the plays which were staged was sometimes remarkable. In Munich once, fourteen important members of the Bavarian court withdrew from public life in order to practice devotional exercises, so strongly were they impressed by the Jesuit play, Cenodoxus” ¹⁹ This was precisely what the Jesuits wanted; and they continued to want it right down into modem times, with the invention of film.

By the mid-seventeenth century, there were 300 Jesuit colleges in Europe, putting out quality dramas for the purpose of promoting Roman Catholicism! ²⁰

Jesuit Use of Theatre in Their Mission Work

The Jesuits were not content with making use of their theatre productions in Roman Catholic Europe. They were zealous, indeed fanatical missionaries, spanning out across the earth to work tirelessly for the great goal of converting the whole world to Roman Catholicism. And they swiftly realised the immense advantages of using plays to attract audiences and impress them with the teachings and practices of Romanism on the mission fields. The power of a visual presentation of Romanism to peoples who had no prior knowledge of it was truly great. Thus at the same time as they were establishing theatres throughout Europe, they were doing the same in such places as India, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Paraguay. The heads of Jesuit missions in these widely-divergent cultures kn ew that it was essential for them to become competent producers, dramatists and theatre managers, and for their pupils in the mission schools to be taught how to be good actors, so as to be used to promote Roman Catholicism via theatrical productions in their societies and cultures.

They were very smart, those Jesuit missionaries. They followed the methods which Roman Catholicism has always used, and which the Jesuits perfected to a greater degree than any others: they would graft their Romanism onto the traditions and cultures of the people they were seeking to Romanize. ²¹ If, for example, the people they were seeking to reach already had their own traditional religious plays, the Jesuits would simply “baptize” these, keeping the structure of the play but “Romanizing” it as far as possible. This has always been Rome’s way: it took the heathen festival of the birth of the sun god and “Romanized” it as “Christmas”; ²² it took the heathen beliefs in a goddess-mother and her child, baptismal regeneration, a purgatory and prayers for the dead, idols, relic-worship, and so much more, changed the names and slightly altered the ceremonies, and in this manner “Romanized” heathenism as a false form of “Christianity”, as far removed from true, biblical Christianity as it was possible to get. ²³

Hindu India, in particular, took to the Jesuit theatre productions with enthusiasm, because drama in India had long been a highly developed art form. Jesuit missionaries were able to report that their plays attracted the poetry-loving Indians more than anything else. In Goa, for example, a stage was set up in the front of the “church” building, and there the pupils of the Jesuits acted out scenes from the life of the Jesuit missionary to India and so-called “saint”, Francis Xavier.

Another country which took to the Jesuit theatre productions was Japan, and again for the same reason – that the dramatic arts were highly developed there, and had been for centuries. The Japanese dramas centred around their gods and heroes, and the Jesuits simply kept the traditional structures of these plays, but replaced the myths with biblical stories. In various Jesuit colleges in Japan, permanent theatrical schools were established.

Likewise in Mexico and Peru, the Aztecs and Incas had made use of much drama in their culture; and once again the Jesuits were able to make much use of drama to teach the doctrines of Romanism. And they were not even averse, in their plays, to portraying the European Roman Catholic conquerors in a poor light! This appealed greatly to the natives. The end always justifies the means, is the Jesuit principle.

Lowering Morals: Changing Tactics to Keep Audiences Coming

The Jesuits realised that there had to be a difference between the plays they produced in Europe and those they produced on their mission fields. In Asia and America, the natives were perfectly content to see the same plays over and over again, and for their content to be lacking in variety. They generally saw no need for improvements to be made. But in Europe, the Jesuits knew that the only way they could retain their influence over the people via their stage productions was to ensure that these constantly improved, and also began to appeal to the worldly tastes of the people.

Originally, they limited their stage productions to religious themes: events taken from the Bible or from Roman Catholic legends. Even when the play was about some historical event, it always contained an allusion to something in the Bible or in Roman Catholicism. And in presenting their version of morality, they would not, for example, mention anything to do with sexual matters, nor would women be permitted to act in the plays, nor would female characters be permitted even if played by male actors. Furthermore, Latin, the language of the Romish “Church”, was always used.

But then the Jesuits came to realise that unless they changed their tactics, they would lose their audiences. So they started to make changes: female characters began to make their appearance in the plays, although still portrayed by male actors; Latin was no longer solely used, with short plays in the national language being permitted; and even in their serious dramas they began to permit a touch of humour for the entertainment of the audience. It was soon found that comedies were far more popular with the people than the classic tragedies. With this in mind, a German Jesuit priest, Johann Baptista Adolph, began around 1700 to write many comedies for school theatres, which were so popular that the Munich Jesuit college in its report to the Jesuit headquarters in Rome stated that there is “no better means of winning over the Germans [to Romanism], of making friends of heretics [Protestants] and other enemies of the Church, and of filling the schools”, than those farcical productions. ²⁴

In France, also, tragedies began to lose ground to comedies, and the three most important Jesuit authors at the time – priests Poree, Le Jay and Ducerceau – concentrated on writing comedies, even though they referred to them as “dramas” or “fables”. And in time the kinds of comedies preferred by actors and people were (very naturally given the fallen nature of men) those with coarse jokes and extempores. How very modem-sounding!

The Jesuits had seen the need to introduce all these elements into their plays; and now, as wandering troupes of actors continued to lower the moral standards and grow in popularity, the priests of Loyola “began more and more frequently to introduce into their pieces secular matters and love tangles; finally, the stereotyped character of the nurse was taken over from the English drama to the Jesuit theatre, and here, as in Shakespeare, she plays unmistakably the part of a shameless matchmaker.” ²⁵ Jesuit leaders at times issued warnings to their underlings producing such plays to be very careful, because of their use of such things as inappropriate love scenes, vulgar jesting, etc. But the Jesuits on the ground well knew the power of them, and the bar was constantly being lowered.

When we examine the Jesuit involvement in Hollywood, it will become clear that the lessons learned centuries ago when producing the Jesuit theatrical plays were applied to the movie industry: the lowering of the perceived moral standards, the introduction of things perceived as borderline morality at the time, etc. Anything in order to maintain control over the industry and to keep the masses coming. This was all the Jesuits were interested in then, and it is all they are interested in today.

Jesuit Use of Other Dramatic Arts

Other dramatic arts attracted Jesuit interest as well, and were incorporated into their use of the theatre to exercise influence over the people.

Opera was one of these. As Jesuit stage productions began to use lyrics and choruses more and more, so the operatic treatment of the chorale was slowly developed, in the forefront of which were the Jesuits of Munich. It was not long before their theatrical dramas became regular oratorios.

In Wurzburg in Germany, in 1617, a Musical Comedy of the Liberation of Ignatius Loyola, Founder of the Society of Jesus, was produced. A few decades later, in Munich, they produced a religious musical drama entitled Philothea, or the Wonderful Love of God for the Soul of Man, Drawn from Holy Scriptures and Set to Delightful Melody. This opera was very popular.

Most of the composers of the Jesuit operas were directors of cathedral choirs, and music teachers at Jesuit schools, although sometimes the Jesuits made use of other musicians, including no less than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In 1767, when he was only eleven years old, Mozart was commissioned to compose a Latin opera, to be produced at the Jesuit college in Salzburg. It was called Apollo et Hyacinthus seu Hyacinthi Metamorphosis.

As competition from Italian opera, in particular, increased, putting great pressure on the Jesuits to equal, if not excel, the Italian productions, their stage effects and scenes became ever more elaborate, to hold the interest of the audience. The actors’ costumes were expensive and extravagant. The technical skill they used was truly astonishing for the time. The decorations on stage were extremely elaborate and authentic. Trap-doors were used on stage so as to make ghostly apparitions appear. “Ghosts” rose into the air, “gods” appeared in clouds, machines produced the noise of thunder and wind. The magic lantern was used to good effect to make it appear as if visions and dreams were actually taking shape on the stage. Huge crowd scenes were sometimes used too: battles, marches, processions, angel choirs – all were enacted on the stage, with sometimes up to a thousand extras acting their parts.

Ballet was another art used by the Jesuits. As dance became increasingly popular in the higher ranks of society in the seventeenth century, the Jesuits became increasingly interested in using it in their theatrical productions. For to them, in Roman Catholic countries, the education of the young had always been entrusted. Thus if they were to retain control over the young, they had to interest them in the art of dancing, once it began to become popular among the people; otherwise their influence over the young would wane. And so, dance was introduced into their stage plays, with the French Jesuit priest, Jouvancy, writing: “Place should certainly be found for dancing; it is a worthy entertainment for well-bred men, and a useful exercise for young people.” ²⁶ Ballet soon became a major part of the Jesuit plays, with the era’s most famous dancing masters overseeing the rehearsals and even participating in the Jesuit ballets. This all increased the stature and influence of the Jesuit Order, particularly because dance masters enjoyed a stature and popularity with the people that was the equivalent, in their day, of that enjoyed by movie actors and rock “stars” of today.

Conclusion

Although little realised today, the Jesuit theatre played an important part in the development of theatre as a whole. A number of the most famous dramatists in Europe were educated in Jesuit colleges, and first performed in Jesuit theatres. These were the “stars” of their day. Voltaire was just one who was tutored by a Jesuit who became his friend in later years, the priest Poree.

And this deep Jesuit influence in the theatre is felt to this day! “More often than a superficial examination will reveal, we meet obvious traces of Jesuit influence in our present-day culture… many traces of Jesuitic influence… remain in the theatre”. ²⁷

And thus, with their deep involvement in the dramatic arts almost from their inception, the Jesuits were well set for involving themselves in the twentieth century’s most popular and powerful dramatic art form: the movies.