Comic interludes within Swiss Saint Plays

Saint plays tend to involve characters and themes related to everyday life, local history and popular traditions to a much greater extent than religious plays treating scriptural material: because of this orientation towards the conditio humana, comedy and entertainment gain in importance. This contribution deals with saint plays from Switzerland, where the genre emerged only decades after the Reformation, much later than in other German speaking countries. As the veneration of saints was banned by Swiss reformers like Zwingli and Calvin, the staging of saint plays was an exclusively Catholic practice, closely connected to the Counter-Reformation and its endeavours to reform the ecclesiastical and spiritual life. This paper focusses on the comic interludes St Wilhelm by Jakob Wilhelmi, and Brother Klaus by Johannes Zurflüe, and compares the staging of these saint plays with the contemporary carnival play Convivii Process of Renward Cysat. There are clear similarities: both saint plays and the carnival play stage the comical and the sacred side by side, and both aim to change the viewers’ behaviour by promoting a lifestyle based on moderation and piety.