Ferdinand Rosner, Muscae Vienneses et Ettalenses

With his new version of the Oberammergau Passion Play, the Benedictine Ferdinand Rosner (1709-1778) became the mediator between Jesuit Theatre and popular theatre. The son of an imperial court official attended the Ritterakademie in Ettal in 1721-1726, where he entered the monastery in 1726 and was later appointed professor of poetry and rhetoric as well as president of the Marian Congregation (also at the episcopal lyceum in Freising from 1769).

Following the example of the Musenalmanache, which published the best poems, smaller unprinted works, parts of dramas, compositions, etc. published in the previous year, he compiled several volumes, which he called "Muscae" ("Mosquitoes") with a sense of irony and of which six have survived in the Bavarian State Library: Clm 6121 contains epigrams, chronicles, banter, poems, etc.; Clm 6122 is a collection of 7,328 sentences and Clm 6123 is a kind of encyclopaedia of conversations whose content ranges from the Roman emperors' election slogans to pointed cardinal remarks and rules of life. Furthermore, Clm 6124 is Rosner's failed attempt to collect all Ettal plays; Clm 6124 b includes numerous elegies, emblems and epigrams; Clm 6124 can be divided into 3,346 sentences, 1,450 epitaphs and epigrams, 12 verses and 20 songs.

To the digitised copy