Il teatro domenicano

To date, no monographic study has been published to account for how the Order of Preachers conceived the role of the theatre over the centuries, explaining its liturgical or catechetical occasions, its function, its context, its relationship with the public. This essay outlines an introductory framework, both theoretical and historical, to a topic that is still to be explored. It is divided into two parts: in the first part it aims to investigate Thomas Aquinas's position on the function of the shows and their licitness, also in the light of the meaning of fiction and simulation. This is an important theme, since the Christian discourse on spectacle (from Tertullian to Augustine and Chrysostom) had marked not only a break with the Greek idea of representation, but also the birth of a new concept of ‘drama’, based on memory and not on mimesis, that aims to involve the audience. While in line with patristic position, Thomas makes a fundamental shift, founding the possibility of a theatre that goes in the direction of the Dominican mission, namely witnessing the Truth and preaching for Salvation. In the second part, the essay analyses some of the scenes in which what we might call the ‘Dominican drama’ was embodied: the first is the confraternal scene of devotion, which gives rise both to a ‘civic dramaturgy’ and to a ‘community theatre’ with a catechetical function; the second is the scene of the word - that is, the relations between preaching and representation -, which seem to be connected to different dramatic and performative typologies; the third, finally, is the scene of the body of Christ, where ‘dramatic thought’ is decisive for both the form and function of the ‘stage actions’ that will gradually adorn the Corpus Christi procession.