MASEN, JAKOB. - Jesuit, humanist, playwright, and historian, b. on 23 March 1666 at Rheindahlen, d. at Colonia on 27 Sept. 1681. He taught literary subjects at Emmerich, Münster, Aquisgrana, and then at Colonia, where for many years he distinguished himself as a preacher, director of Marian congregations, poet, and playwright.
M. was among the most fashionable men of letters of his time, and one of the greatest in the art of the theatre. 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 should be counted the Rusticus imperans, considered by some, from the artistic point of view, the finest work of Jesuit theatre. Also famous are the tragedy Mauritius Orientis imperator, the Ollaria, and the Bacchi schola eversa. M. dealt with ancient tragedy, comedy, and tragicomedy, and with the poetic art of Homer and Virgil in the work Palastra eloquentae ligatae (3 vols., Colonia 1634-64), and was also the author of the poem Surcotis (there 1767). Among his historical works, at the suggestion of the nuncio of Colonia, Chigi (Alessandro VII), he composed the Anima historiae huius temporis in Caroli V et Ferdinandi I imperio expressa (there 1672), and edited Cristoforo Brouwer’s Antiquitates annalium Trevirensium (Liegi 1670) and the continuation of the Annali di Paderborn (unpublished, 1677-79). He also wrote in support of the reunion of the Protestant Churches with the Catholic Church, as well as several ascetic booklets.