Christo si è fermato a Napoli. Renaissance und Reformation im Neapel des 16. Jahrhunderts (Giovanni Domenico di Lega, Morte di Christo, Napoli 1549)

Abstract

Abstract Despite being only a minor member of the Neapolitan Accademia degli Incogniti and being far less known than prominent members of the academy such as Laura Terracina, Giovan Domenico di Lega published the highly significant sacred tragedy Morte di Christo in 1549. The text mirrors the classicist poetics of an Aristotelian tragedy and emphasises the belief of partial adaptability of Aristotelian concepts to the neotestamentarian content of Christ’s passion and crucifixion. Thus transforming the traditional Sacra rappresentazione into a “tragedia sacra”, di Lega choses not only a typical approach of Renaissance poetics to biblical texts, he also stages mainly the gospel according to John. In doing so he not only shows to be a philologist rather than a teller of pious legends like the authors of Sacre rappresentazioni, but he also presents himself as a supporter of a free circulation of the New Testament in its vernacular version, which was suppressed in Naples being part of the Spanish territories. In clear opposition to Spanish politics of religion in Naples, but in accordance with other members of the Accademia degli Incogniti and the former group of ‘spirituali’ around Juan de Valdés, who died in Naples in 1541, di Lega combines the major texts of a not only ‘Lutheran’ reform – the gospel according to John and the letter of saint Paul to the Romans – with the spirituali’s manifesto Il beneficio di Cristo, prohibited and burned shortly afterwards. In an increasingly orthodox environment such as Naples during the 1540 s di Legas Tragedia sacra with its combination of Renaissance poetics and explosive elements of religious reform could not be of great success, therefore there exists no further edition after the one of 1549. Nonetheless it witnesses the aborted attempts of Catholic reform in mid sixteenth century Naples.