MASEN, Jakob. - Jesuit, humanist, playwright, and historian, b. 23 March 1606 at Rheindahlen, d. at Cologne on 27 Sept. 1681. He taught literature at Emmerich, Münster, Aix-la-Chapelle, and later at Cologne, where for many years he distinguished himself as a preacher, director of Marian congregations, poet, and playwright.
M. was one of the most fashionable men of letters of his time and one of the greatest masters of the theatre. His *Josephate* was performed at Münster in 1647 as a gala spectacle at the assembly 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 *Rituus imperans*, judged by some, from the artistic standpoint, the finest of Jesuit theatre. Also celebrated 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 *Palaestra eloquentiae ligatae* (3 vols., Cologne 1634–64), and was also the author of the poem *Surcosti* (ibid. 1767). Among his historical works, undertaken at the suggestion of the nuncio of Cologne, Chigi (Alexander VII), was *Anima historiae huius temporis in Caroli V et Ferdinandi I imperio expressa* (ibid. 1672), and he edited the *Antiquitates animalium Trevirensium* of Christoph Brouwer (Liège 1670) and continued the *Annals of Paderborn* (unpublished, 1677–79). He also wrote in favour of the reunion of the Protestant Churches with the Catholic, as well as some ascetical works.