BIDERMANN, JAKOB. - German Jesuit and man of letters, the most representative author of the famous "Jesuit theater," b. at Ehingen (Württemberg) in 1578, d. at Rome on 20 Aug. 1639. Having entered the novitiate of Landsberg in 1594, he had as teachers the best humanists that the Society then counted in Germany, Giacomo Pontano and especially Mattia Rader, whose influence he strongly underwent. He taught humanities at Augsburg and then, after theological studies at Dillingen (1603-1606), again at Munich; these are the years of his best literary production, which coincides with the apogee of the Jesuit theater at Munich. A professor of philosophy (1615-18) and of theology (1618-26) at Dillingen, he was called to Rome in 1626 as general reviser of books and in this capacity assisted Father General Vitelleschi with many votes and opinions.
His collections of poetry had many reprintings, mainly for use in the schools: Epigrammatum libri III (Dillingen 1620); Herodias (ibid. 1626), on the Holy Innocents; Heroum epistolae (Antwerp 1630); Sylvulae Hendecaryllabarum (Rome 1634); Heroidum epistolae (ibid. 1638), etc. He also wrote in prose: Res a B. Ignatio Loiola... gestae (Munich 1612, translated from Ribadeneira, several reprintings); Utopia seu sales musici, quibus ludicra mixtim et seria... denarrantur (Dillingen 1640, a Latin novel for students, very lively; a German translation, Bacchusia oder Fastnacht-Land was given in 1677 by Cr. A. Hörl, suppressing the author's name).
But his greatest merit he had as a dramatist and he powerfully influenced the evolution of the genre in Germany: he broke away, in fact, from the tradition dominant until then.
The most celebrated of his great compositions is the Cenodoxus, der Doktor von Paris (1602 and, somewhat retouched, 1609), although it still preserves much of the ancient mysteries; the peak of Baroque art B. reaches with the two other masterpieces, Belisarius (1607) and Ioannes Calybita (1618). Among his other tragedies are Cassianus (1602), Adriamus (1603), Macarius (1613) Joseph Aegypti prorex (1615), Philemon (1618), Iosaphat (1619). A posthumous edition gathered ten dramas with interesting introductions: Ludi teatrales sacri seu opera comica postuma (2 vols., Munich 1666). The Cenodoxus returned to vogue in the 20th century. The German translation by Meichel (ibid. 1635) has been taken up again in the Deutsche Literatur collection of the publisher Reclam (Barock series, vol. Ordensdrama, by Flemming, Leipzig 1930, pp. 47-183). It was brought once more to the stage, mainly in the German adaptation by H. Rommel, Cenodoxus, der Doktor von Paris (Munich 1932).
Characteristics of B.'s art are the acuteness of analysis and the strong psychological construction of the characters (it is a dramatic transposition of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius); there is added a strong realism, which curiously brings together the tragic and the comic pushed to the burlesque, as in his contemporary Shakespeare, with whom he has much in common; mainly then his ability to make irresistible tragic effects spring from the great Baroque or human themes (the opposition between the temporal, fleeting, and the eternal, the caducity of human fortune, etc.).
Bibliography12 works
Edmondo Lamalle