Innere Bilder - äussere Schau

With their innovative use of media, the early Jesuits revolutionized the performing and visual arts of their time. A comparative look at theater, sacred architecture, and painting allows for the reconstruction of a media dispositif that maintains its impact even today. This work, situated at the intersection of literary studies and art history, questions the origins, functions, and the theological and devotional pedagogical arguments behind the order's media usage. The focus is on the Jesuit theater productions, which are to be related to and read alongside festival and performance reports, legends, as well as sacred architecture and ephemeral apparatus. The author demonstrates that Jesuit theater exists within a media network in which individual art forms interact synergistically to implement a novel reading, reception, and imagination technique aimed at training and disciplining the imagination apparatus, based on Jesuit spirituality and devotional practices. The emphasis is on the artistic outputs of the Roman and German provinces of the order during the period from 1597 to 1739.