The Moresca Dance in Counter-Reformation Rome: Court Medicine and the Moderation of Exceptional Bodies

Abstract

In the early modern elite court culture, dance held a prominent sociopolitical position. Nevertheless, in the Counter-Reformation era, the Catholic Church put dance culture under scrutiny. The moresca, one of the most popular dance spectacles that expressed the elite’s taste in exceptional and wondrous bodies, was criticized as deviant by Catholic reformers. In this criticism, the religious discourse often overlapped with contemporary medical discourse, which considered aspects of dance culture as unhealthy for both body and soul. In Counter-Reformation Rome, Girolamo Mercuriale, the court physician of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, following the aspirations of the Counter-Reformation papacy for spiritual reform, moderates in his medical treatise De arte gymnastica the controversial moresca: by modifying it into a medical exercise, he regulates the moresca in both medical and religious terms, making it an appropriate body practice for the elite.