MASEN, JAKOB. - Jesuit, humanist, playwright and historian, b. 23 March 1666 at Rheindahlen, d. at Cologne on 27 Sept. 1681. He taught literary subjects at Emmerich, Münster, Aachen, then at Cologne, where he distinguished himself for many years as a preacher, director of Marian congregations, poet and playwright.
M. was one of the most fashionable men of letters of his time, and in the art of the theater one of the greatest. His Josaphat was performed at Münster in 1647 as a gala spectacle at the gathering of all the plenipotentiaries of the principal nations of Europe who had come for the Peace of Westphalia.
Among his most ingenious comedies must be counted the Rusticus imperans, judged by some, from the artistic standpoint, the best of the Jesuit theater. Also famous are the tragedy Mauritius Orientis imperator, the Ollaria and the Bacchi schola eversa. M. treated of ancient tragedy, comedy and tragicomedy, and of the poetic art of Homer and Virgil in the work Palastra eloquentae ligatae (3 vols., Cologne 1634-64), and was also the author of the poem Surcotis (ibid. 1767). Among historical works he composed, at the suggestion of the nuncio of Cologne, Chigi (Alexander VII), the Anima historiae huius temporis in Caroli V et Ferdinandi I imperio expressa (ibid. 1672), and he edited the edition of the Antiquitates annalium Trevirensium of Christoph Brouwer (Liège 1670) and the continuation of the Annals of Paderborn (unpublished, 1677-79). He also wrote on the reunion of the Protestant Churches with the Catholic, and some ascetical opuscules.
Bibliography3 works
Arnaldo M. Lanz