Ecclesia triumphans - when Baron de Champs played Grand Master Lascaris : Malta and the conversion of a prince from Morocco in seventeenth-century Jesuit drama

Abstract

That the crucial episode in the life of the convert and prince of Fes Muhammad el-Attaz alias Baldassare Diego Loyola has found its echo in the famous Spanish dramatist and playwright Pedro Calderon de la Barca's play El gran principe de Fez is well known. That this moment in the life of the prince of Fes in Malta in the 1650s - where he converted to Christianity and became in the Catholic world for some time one of the most popular figures and a symbol of counter-reformation - also found reflections in the German Jesuit theatre has completely escaped the attention of literary historians. Beyond the value as a document of Zeitgeist , the copy of the 'perioch' (extensive programm sheet) of the drama Gliickliche Freyheit in Gefangenschaft ('Happy freedom in captivity') preserved in Munich's Bavarian State Library also offers some interesting views on dramaturgical and technical issues oi how the Jesuits wanted to have this story staged and presented. Apart from that ever, the list of personalities who were to take part as actors has survived. [excerpt]