“Deum tolles ex oculis”, ou l’impossible compromis entre mystère et tragédie

Abstract

As it enabled a straightforward dialogue between God and mankind, the presence of the divinity on the stage of a mystery play, back in the Middle Ages, both appeared like a feature of this theatrical genre and established a fundamental difference with tragedy. This study compares three plays written in the late 15th century and the 16th century, staging the sacrifice of Isaac, and proves how the representation of God on stage forbids any possibility of a transcendent Hereafter, the essential condition for the emergence of tragedy. With such an arrangement, the theatrical universe of mystery plays leads the divinity to justify His decisions, while entertaining a horizontal relationship with the other character. In mystery plays, the balance thus tips towards divine immanence, at the expense of transcendence – the latter, claimed by the Reformation, being necessary to the rebirth of tragedy. It then comes as no surprise that 16th-century humanists, who rejected this genre so closely linked with the theatre of the Middle Ages, felt the need to exclude God from the theatrical area, in order to break away from the medieval tradition and revive the precepts from the Antiquity. Among them, the expression Multa tolles ex oculis, borrowed from Horace, can be modified into a hypothetical Deum tolles ex oculis, thus underlining the transition from mystery plays to tragedy.