"Sacer horror". The Construction and Experience of the Sublime in the Jesuit Festivities of the Early Seventeenth-Century Southern Netherlands

The festivities organized in 1622 by the Society of Jesus in the Southern Netherlands filled the everyday space of the city to turn it into a place of special experience that can be approached through the lens of the sublime. Indeed, ornamentation, sounds, and lights shaping the ephemeral scenery and event were conceived to inspire in the mind of the spectators what the Jesuits called sacer horror, a Latin expression used to refer to all the physical sensations that the ancients felt in front of divinity—religious awe, that is, the organic sensation of respect mixed with fear and wonder felt in the presence of gods or cosmic forces. We would like to show how the intensification of synaesthesic effects, with their direct impact on the body by stunning the senses, was intended to unveil the majesty of God and raise the mind toward the divine.