TERTULLIAN: De Spectaculis

Tertullian (c. 155-225) was born and educated in Carthage before going to Rome to be trained as a lawyer. His primary work focusing on the theatre is De Spectaculis (Concerning the Spectacles). Scholars differ as to the date of composition of this work and whether it was before or after his conversion to Montanism. My best guess would be that it was written early in the third century after he left the communion of the African Church because of its failure to enforce his vision of morality among the faithful. Ever the logical legalist, Tertullian was no doubt drawn to the Montanist harshness in matters of forgiveness.

His anti-theatrical arguments in De Spectaculis are basically three:

1. Spectacles are inherently idolatrous. "…it is certain the thing springs from idolatry. For the Liberalia, under the general designation of 'ludi,' clearly declared the glory of Father Bacchus; for to Bacchus these festivities were first consecrated by grateful peasants, in return for the boon he conferred on them, as they say, making known the pleasures of wine… You have festivals bearing the name of the great Mother and Apollo, of Ceres too, and Neptune, and Jupiter Latiaris, and Flora, all celebrated for a common end; the others have their religious origin in the birthdays and solemnities of kings, in public successes, in municipal holidays. There are also testamentary exhibitions, in which funeral honors are rendered to the memories of private persons; …If it is lawful to offer homage to the dead, it will be just as lawful to offer it to their gods: you have the same origin in both cases; there is the same idolatry; there is on our part the same solemn renunciation against all idolatry…" By extension, all equipment used to present a spectacle is idolatrous.

2. The place where a spectacle is performed is forever defiled. "…we lapse from God…by touching and tainting ourselves with the world's sins. I shall break with my Maker, that is, by going to the Capitol or the temple of Serapis to sacrifice or adore, as I shall also do by going as a spectator to the circus and the theatre. The places themselves do not contaminate, but that which is done in them, from which even the places themselves, we maintain, become defiled. The polluted things pollute us…"

"…we shall now direct out course…to those of the theatre, beginning with the place of exhibition. At first the theatre was properly a temple of Venus; and, to speak briefly, it was owing to this fact that stage performances were allowed to escape censure, and got a footing in the world… Pompey the Great, less only than his theatre, when he had erected that citadel of all impurities, fearing some time or other censorian condemnation of his memory, superposed on it a temple of Venus; and summoning by public proclamation the people to its consecration, he called it not a t heater, but a temple, 'under which,' said he, 'we have placed tiers of seats for viewing the shows.' So he threw a veil over a structure on which condemnation had been often passed, and which is ever to be held in reprobation, by pretending that it was a sacred place."

3. Christians foreswore the theatre in their baptismal vows. Not in so many words, says Tertullian, but implicitly since the theare is necessarily wicked and wickedness is renounced…

"…let them wait till Doomsday! Then will be the time to listen to the tragedians whose lamentations will be more poignant for their proper pain. Then will the comedians turn and twist, rendered nimbler than ever by the sting of the fire that is not quenched."
[There was a medieval teaching that one of the rewards of the faithful was to watch the agony of the damned. Quite a spectacle to be looked forward to!]