Seventeenth-Century Jesuit Festivities and Celebrations: A Case Study of Jesuit Scenographic Specificities

The Jesuits of the seventeenth century are often presented as having been outstanding scenographers and accomplished masters in the art of staging. The studies leading to this conclusion have often been limited to retracing the progress of the event and to describing briefly the decoration’s structure. These studies however often fail to consider and think about the value and the status of the sources that are the only remaining documents giving us access to the original festivity of which they offer a very particular narration and description. The festivity always lies beyond our grasp because the sources are incomplete and partial: the details they give have been selected according to the audience and the aspects they emphasize are chosen for some aims they try to reach. Consequently, this gives a partial and highly distorted view of the original event. That’s what I focus on in this paper, relying on a large corpus of several festivities organised to celebrate religious events of the XVIIth century. I especially focus on the accounts of the beatification and the canonization of Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier in 1622. I’m aimed to define what the accounts add to the reception of the feast by the reader and what impression they leave in his mind, thanks to their rhetorical construction