Jacob Bidermann

Who was Jacob Bidermann?

Jacob Bidermann was born in the Austrian village of Ehingen, about 30 miles southwest of Ulm. He was a Jesuit priest and professor of theology, but is remembered mostly for his plays.

He had a talent for writing plays that began comically, with loud talk and clowning around, and then turning the tables on his characters, and switching to totally tragic circumstances. At the age of 22 he wrote his first play Cenodoxus, in Latin, a dramatization of the popular Legend of the Doctor of Paris,. In the play, considered his most notable, a man dies and interrupts his own last rites to announce his own damnation. The play was performed in Augsburg on two consecutive days in July 1602.

Another of Bidermann's notable plays is Philemon Martyr, dealing with the persecution of Christians in early Rome. In this play, a musician named Philemon agrees to substitute himself for a Christian friend, take his name, and pretend to render sacrifice to some pagan idols for him, thereby allowing him to avoid - however technically - the Ten Commandments prohibition of doing honor to idols.