Theatrum mundi, public acting and the plane of collective Imagination

The conflict between the two dominant political parties in the Dutch Republic, orangists and republicans, was not just a political conflict within one and the same world. The two implied different worlds, different attitudes, and a different baroque. The same, of course, holds for the conflict between Protestants and Catholics, or between those who believed in God and those who flatly denied his existence. One of the figures in which all these tensions appeared to come together was Franciscus van den Enden (1602–1674), a remarkable figure in his own right as well as the teacher of Spinoza. The website about his person and work introduces him as: ‘Former Jesuit, neo-Latin poet, physician, art dealer, philosopher, teacher of Spinoza, and conspirator against Louis XIV’. It could have added: ‘book-seller, founder of a revolutionary Latin School, playwright, stage-director, freethinker’. Although Van den Enden was clearly an energetic man, Louis XIV proved a bigger fish to fry. Towards the end of his life, his freedom of speech had become more and more restricted in the Dutch Republic, and Van den Enden travelled to Paris in 1671 to open up a Latin School again, just as he had done previously in Amsterdam. Here as well he would preach revolution, advocating a free democratic republic. He would also take part in the Rohan complot that aimed to remove king Louis. These conspirators were found out and, whereas the aristocratic ones were honorably beheaded, citizen Van den Enden was dishonorably hanged on 27 November 1674.

Van den Enden's ideas about the non-existence of God implied a radically new form of thinking about how human beings appeared to an Other, to others and to themselves. For centuries the theatrum mundi metaphor had been the dominant metaphor that defined how people thought of their appearance in the world, their appearance within the all-encompassing view of a supreme being. That metaphor came to lose its ground however, and three of Van den Enden's texts show as much. Two of them dealt with the New World, and the third was a school drama: Philedonius. All three demonstrate how Van den Enden was not so much concerned with human beings as the players on an earthly stage.