Padova’s scientific contributions

Medieval spectacles displayed a great range of multisensorial devices in order to attract the audience’s attention so as to indoctrinate them both civically and religiously. We will establish a specific taxonomy of devices aimed at inciting the audience’s full five senses by means of analyzing three different historical resources: the detailed stage directions which often accompany the dramatic texts from that time, some stage direction’s notebooks, and specific scenic trickery (secretz). We will also draw upon a range of spectacle’s expense accounts and the iconography therein to set out a meticulous interpretation of their engaging capacity. Smell was stimulated with meaningful odorous effects that could either evoke sacrality (scents of incense, olibanum, and storax), the transient space of the venerated object (the myrtle spread through the streets where the processions of the Corpus Christi, the Saint Patron or the entourage of the royal entrance had to pass through), or the divinity’s residence (delectable scents dispersed in the paradise’s set). In contrast, the infernal scenario was designated by unpleasant odors such as burnt sulfur and other combusted elements like hair and nails clipped from saddle animals. The ears were also the target of representative sound devices. Just as Hell was connotated with metallic sounds, irritating ringing and a varied range of firecrackers, Paradise used to be a harmonious string music, little barrel organs, plainsongs, or well-chorded polyphony –all melodies that were denied to the devil and Evil. Logically, for theatre’s eminently visual nature, sight was the most invigorated sense. Through all kind of artifices and a playful repertoire of mirabilia, the medieval spectacle impinged the audience’s visual frame. Moreover, the very disposition of the audience, crowded around the space of the spectacle’s contemplation, instigated a participative friction amongst spectators and the pious kiss of the relics and those objects which, for having appeared on stage, had also acquired a sense of sacrality. In some liturgic actions such as the Mandatum, the audience was urged to participation with an inevitably sensual spur. Lastly, taste could be stirred in some meaningful scenic actions close to the eucharistic spirit of the communion. Altogether these specific devices triggered a multisensorial reception charged with intention that, with the anti-theatrical Crusade unleashed by the counter-reformist Church, fueled the most refractory part of the moralists: they considered, indeed, that in theatre people went to sin with the five senses.