Renaissance drama and tragic theology: a reading of Théodore de Bèze’s Abraham sacrifiant (1550) and George Buchanan’s Jepthes sive votum (1554)

Abstract

This paper addresses the relationship between Christianity and tragic drama through a comparative reading of Théodore de Bèze’s Abraham sacrifiant and George Buchanan’s Jepthes sive votum. These plays are examples of the complex syncretism of Renaissance humanism: how a theme found in both classical blood rituals and tragic models (most infamously in Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia) is reconfigured within a Christian, specifically Calvinist worldview. I show how the plays hold together understandings of divine providence and tragic loss in ways which run contrary to the arguments of Steiner (The Death of Tragedy, 1964), Jaspers (Tragedy Is Not Enough, 1953) and I.A. Richards (The Principles of Literary Criticism, 1924) that there can be no such thing as “Christian tragedy”. Situating Renaissance polemics on the crucifixion and the Eucharist, the paper engages thinkers such as Rowan Williams, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Donald MacKinnon and Paul Janz who insist on the tragic nature of Christian faith. It explores the threatened or completed sacrifice of the child (Isaac, Iphis, Iphigenia, Christ) as a propitiatory blood ritual and its relation to theatrical performance. Understanding the mass as a kind of tragic liturgy, the paper reads the plays against both the narrative of the crucifixion and Euripidean tragedy. It interrogates how a Christian tragedy can work -- that an otherwise unredeemed loss (the death of Christ) can be redeemed through faith in the miracle of the Resurrection, turning sacrifice of futurity into a promised future beyond the grave and beyond human history itself.