Jakob Bidermann

Bidermann, Jakob (1578–1639), Jesuit priest, and an outstanding writer of plays in Latin for collegiate production (see JESUIT DRAMA). The best of those which have survived is Cenodoxus, the story of a pious hypocrite in Paris whose soul, after death, is tried and cast into Hell. The play ends with the founding by St Bruno, who has witnessed the condemnation, of the religious order of Carthusians. Cenodoxus was first performed in Latin in 1602 in Augsburg, and in Munich in 1609. In 1958 it was produced at the Residenztheater in Munich as part of the city's celebration of its 800th anniversary, in an abridged German text which in 1975 was published in an English translation.

Jakob Bidermann , 1578-1639, German Jesuit dramatist and poet. Based on saint and martyr legends, Bidermann's plays were among the finest artistic expressions of the Counter Reformation in Germany. His chief work, Cenodoxus (1602), was a Faustian drama about mortality. Professor of rhetoric in Munich, later assistant to the Jesuit general in Rome, he also wrote Belisar (1607), Marcarius (1613), and Himmelsglöcklein [heavenly bells] (1620), a collection of songs.