"Cruel Compassion": Mikolaj Rej's Figliki and Liturgical Drama

Wojtowicz explores Mikolaj Rej's Figliki (1574), where the "figlik" is understood as a subgenre of the epigram developed by Rej. Most of his figliks were paraphrases of other authors (Poggio Bracciolini, Heinrich Bebel and others). In the epigrams analysed by Wojtowicz, Rej refers to Catholic liturgical drama. Contextualising Rej's "figliks" with other "figliks" that thematise religion, this article highlights performative aspects and the embodied and material dimension of communication. Rej shows how the spontaneous behaviour of both the actors and the audience allows the everyday to enter the Catholic rite and subverts the message of the dramatisation - a message intended to be uplifting but proven ineffective in religious terms. Even a minor and unintentional moment of awkwardness on the part of the actors or the audience's inappropriate reaction make it possible to destabilise the hateful rite present in the papacy present in the Catholic liturgical drama. Rej reveals the mechanism whereby the performative situation spontaneously becomes autonomous, eluding any religious control by the Church. Rej's satire and mockery also result from his religious pedagogy: Catholic liturgical drama puts the salvation of laypersons at risk.