THE SUNDAY TIMES OF MALTA
Culture and Entertainment
I October 13, 2013
55
Books
The sacred in the Baroque
Catherine Tabone
FRANS CIAPPARA (Ed): The
Journal of Baroque Studies, Vol.
I, No. 1. The University of Malta,
2013. 147 pp
The University of Malta’s International Institute for Baroque
Studies has recently published
the first volume of The Journal of
Baroque Studies.
The publication contains contributions that discuss some of
the most topical manifestations
of the Baroque Age in Malta,
Europe and beyond.
The first paper, authored by
Elizabeth Tingle from the
University of Plymouth, explores
the development of the cult of
St Vincent Ferrer in Brittany,
culminating in its 17th-century
revival.
Tingle places the renewed interest in this Catalan saint, who had
preached extensively in Brittany
and was buried in Vannes Cathedral, within the context of a wider
post-Tridentine revitalisation of
devotion to saints.
Ferrer’s doctrinally orthodox
life and his role as witness to the
faith being consonant with the
saintly virtues, promoted by the
counter-reformation, gave his
cult overwhelming predominance on local saints, who conformed less to the baroque
model of sainthood.
Most interestingly, Tingle links
the resurgence of interest in Ferrer with Brittany’s quest to assert
and maintain its privileges in
France, to which it had only been
formally united in 1532.
The work that follows is an
analysis of the terms ‘counterreformation’ and ‘baroque’.
Patrick Preston from the University of Chichester endeavours to
elucidate whether the former as
a style owes its genesis to the latter. Preston first discusses three
different understandings of the
counter-reformation, as postulated by Henry Outram Evennett,
Hubert Jedin and Massimo
Firpo. In so doing, he places particular emphasis on links with
the Council of Trent, the Holy
Inquisition, the Jesuits and
related historical events, such as
the Peace of Westphalia.
While noting that the views of
these scholars may not be
brought together, Preston
moves to discuss the relationship between art and post-Tridentine religion and politics.
His conclusion, namely that
the convergence of baroque and
the counter-reformation was
coincidental, may help shed
more light on understanding the
shift from the restraint and
severity advocated by the Council of Trent to the exuberance of
the baroque style.
In contrast to the analytical
nature of Preston’s contribution,
Paola Vismara from the University of Milan approaches her subject matter, namely miracles in
missionary lands occurring predominantly during the 17th century, from the perspective of
historical anthropology.
Written in French, her paper
describes a series of supernatural interventions across India,
Asia, Indochina and South
America. Thus, we learn of the
Mogol monkey which venerated
the name of Christ written on a
piece of paper; of the inexplicable lights appearing in the sky
following the martyrdom of a
number of children in Nagasaki;
of incorruptible corpses, resurrections and numerous miraculous healings, all testimony to
God’s omnipotence.
Despite the parallel presence
of the diabolic, briefly touched
upon by Vismara, it appears that
in the eyes of the missionaries,
the miracle within the miracle
was the frequent conversion of
those who had witnessed it, if
not of the actual beneficiary.
On a different note, Professor
Denis De Lucca from the University of Malta discusses the eminent contribution of the Jesuits
to the teaching of mathematics
in Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries. Initially, the subject of
academic ridicule in view of its
alleged links with alchemy and
astrology, the Jesuits elevated
the status of the subject among
students, intellectuals and the
nobility through various publications and, most notably,
through the engagement of
renowned scholars with a special
interest in the field at their
college in Rome.
The civil and military applications of the subject struck a
chord with the nobility of the
Romans, who felt ever more
threatened by new military
devices such as cannon and the
introduction of the bastion. This
possibly accounts for the widespread success enjoyed by
Jesuit-run seminaries for nobles
instituted in the region.
Welcoming thousands of students from all over Italy and
The sacred was
also the catalyst
of the secular in
the baroque age,
since religious
institutions, most
notably the
Jesuits, were
prime educators
beyond, the Jesuits imparted
instructions to the crème de la
crème of society also on mathematical disciplines, which
included geometry, arithmetic,
optics, statics, hydrostatics, nautical science, astronomy, logic,
chronology, military architecture and war machines.
The publication’s penultimate
paper by the University of Virginia’s Anne Jacobson Schutte
elucidates a theme that surely
warrants further exploration by
historians.
In a world where travelling
was precarious and, at times,
prohibitive, a number of guide
books were published mostly
throughout the 17th and 18th
centuries to make spiritual, if not
physical, pilgrimages possible.
A small number of them dealt
with such journeys to Loreto,
where, tradition holds, the house
of the Virgin Mary was transported by angels. The paper
tackles known publications that
were marginally or fully concerned with this type of voyage.
Some of them take the form of
a quarantena , that is, a 40-day
prayer exercise conducted in
parallel with events in the life of
Mary and Jesus, beginning with
the Immaculate Conception and
ending with the Assumption.
The most interesting and
exhaustive is undoubtedly the
work of Giovanni Bellarino, who
addresses the reader as “my son”
and who proposes a good number of spiritual exercises, considerations and advice (including
calculating the mileage to Loreto
from the point of departure) to
accompany a pilgrim’s soul to
the Holy House.
The contribution made by
Franco Bruni of the École
Française de Rome is the only
one in the publication that deals
with Malta.
Written in Italian, it provides
an overture, as it were, to the
musical treasures housed at the
Mdina Cathedral archives
and is a definite must-read for
Melitensia afficionados.
From his studies of surviving
musical manuscripts and
printed works dating from the
foundation of the Cathedral’s
cappella in the 1620s, it appears
that the collection is mostly
made up of music from Rome,
Venice, Bologna, Naples and
Sicily (mainly Palermo).
Setting aside the previously
preferred Gregorian style, it contains polychoral pieces, musica
concertata for small and large
ensembles, scores for a solo
voice with basso continuo
and pieces composed for the
a cappella style.
Including the works of composers like Claudio Monteverdi,
Francesco Foggia, Giovanni Battista Vitali and Isabella Leonarda
– whose sounds still reach us
through the centuries – the collection is evidence in itself of
Malta’s profuse cultural connections with major cities of the
Baroque Age. This is substantiated by the remarkable mobility
of musicians and maestri di cappella in the 17th century, some
of whom went on to take positions in Sicily and beyond.
In conclusion, the papers contained in this volume all highlight, in one way or another, the
pervasive influence of religion
on all aspects of life during time,
and provide an acute insight
into what is often referred to
as Baroque Catholicism.
Set against the background of
the
counter-reformation,
Baroque Catholicism was characterised by an exuberant practice of piety that included the
propagation of saints’ cults, proselytising missions and pilgrimages to holy places, together with
exuberant ritual, accompanied
by
sophisticated
musical
arrangements, religious festivals
and civic processions.
Yet, the sacred was also the
catalyst of the secular in the
Baroque Age, since religious
institutions, most notably the
Jesuits, were prime educators,
promoting learning and the arts
in all their forms.
It is these multifaceted aspects
of religion and life at the time
that the different contributors to
this publication have examined
in their respective works, hence
providing a clear looking glass
onto an age characterised by its
ephemeral magnificence.
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