BIDERMANN, JAKOB. – German Jesuit and man of letters, the most representative author of the celebrated “Jesuit theatre,” born at Ehingen (Württemberg) in 1578, died at Rome on 20 August 1639. Having entered the novitiate at Landsberg in 1594, he had as teachers the finest humanists then belonging to the Society in Germany, Giacomo Pontano and especially Mattia Rader, whose influence upon him was profound. He taught humanities at Augsburg and then, after studying theology at Dillingen (1603–1606), once more at Munich; these were the years of his finest literary production, coinciding with the heyday of the Jesuit theatre in Munich. Professor of philosophy (1615–18) and theology (1618–26) at Dillingen, he was summoned to Rome in 1626 as general reviser of books, and in this capacity assisted the Father General Vitelleschi with numerous votes and opinions.
His collections of poetry went through many reprints, chiefly for use in 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, with several reprints); Utopia seu sales musici, quibus ludicira mixtim et seria... denarrantur (Dillingen 1640, a very lively Latin novel for students; a German translation, Bacchusia oder Fastnacht-Land, was published in 1677 by Cr. A. Hörl, without mentioning the author’s name).
But his greatest merit was as a dramatist, and he powerfully influenced the development of the genre in Germany: he departed, in fact, from the tradition that had until then been dominant.
The most celebrated of his major compositions is Cenodoxus, der Doktor von Paris (1602 and, considerably revised, 1609), although it still preserves much from the ancient mysteries; B. reaches the summit of Baroque art 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 brought together ten dramas with interesting introductions: Ludi teatrales sacri seu opera comica postuma (2 vols., Munich 1666). Cenodoxus regained popularity in the twentieth century. Meichel’s German translation (ibid. 1635) was reissued in the Deutsche Literatur collection of the Reclam publishing house (Barock series, vol. Ordensdrama, by Flemming, Leipzig 1930, pp. 47–183). It was once again brought to the stage, chiefly in H. Rommel’s German adaptation, Cenodoxus, der Doktor von Paris (Munich 1932).
The characteristics of B.’s art are the incisiveness of its analysis and the powerful psychological construction of its characters (it is a dramatic transposition of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius); these are joined by a strong realism, which brings the tragic and the comic—carried as far as the burlesque—into curious proximity, as in his contemporary Shakespeare, with whom he has much in common; above all, by his skill in drawing irresistible tragic effects from great Baroque or human themes (the opposition between the temporal, fleeting world and the eternal, the transience of human fortune, etc.).