Innere Bilder - äussere Schau

With their innovative use of media, the early Jesuits revolutionised the performing and visual arts of their time. A comparative look at drama, sacred architecture and painting enables the reconstruction of a media dispositive that has maintained its impact right up to the present day. Located at the interface of literary studies and art history, the work poses the question of the origin, function and theological and pious didactic argumentation behind the order's use of media. The focus is on the theatre productions of the Jesuits, which are to be related to and read in conjunction with festival and performance reports and legends as well as with the sacred building and ephemeral apparatus. The author demonstrates that the Jesuit theatre consists of a media network in which individual art forms interact with each other in a synergetic way in order to implement - on the basis of Jesuit spirituality and piety practices - a new kind of reading, reception and imagination technique for training and disciplining the imaginative apparatus. The focus is on the artistic products of the Roman and German provinces of the order in the period 1597-1739.