Further reading: Cathleen Medwick, Teresa of Avila:
The Progress of a Soul (New York: Knopf, 1999); Carole
Slade, St. Teresa of Avila: Author of a Heroic Life (Berkeley,
Calif. and London: University of California Press, 1995).
terza rima A type of rhymed verse introduced by Dante
in the DIVINE COMEDY. It consists of triplets of usually 11-
syllable lines, the triplets being joined by a rima incatenata
or linked rhyme having the pattern aba bcb cdc ded ... etc.
The chiusa or conclusion is a single line, e.g. ... xyx yzy z.
Perhaps derived from Provençal forms (sirventes) or from
types of sonnet, terza rima acquires a powerful and obvi-
ous symbolic value in the Divine Comedy. It was later
adapted to many different uses, including satire. PETRARCH,
BOCCACCIO, and in English CHAUCER, WYATT, DANIEL, Lord
Byron, and P. B. Shelley all wrote poems in terza rima.
Teutonic Knights A military religious order founded in
the 12th century and originally attached to the German
hospital of St. Mary in Jerusalem. In the 13th century they
were granted territory in eastern Germany from which to
subdue Prussia, and with papal support, rapidly increased
in wealth and numbers. From 1308 the order’s headquar-
ters was Marienburg on the River Vistula. They protected
the merchants of the HANSEATIC LEAGUE, who brought
great prosperity to many towns in the Knights’ Baltic ter-
ritories of Prussia and Livonia. Conflict with Poland
brought the crushing defeat of the Knights at Tannenberg
(1410) from which the order never wholly recovered, and
under the peace of Torun (1466) Poland obtained west
Prussia, confining the Knights to the east, which they held
as a Polish fief. On their eastern frontiers they continued
active into the 16th century against Russian encroach-
ments but the growing nationalism of Poland-Lithuania
effectively ended their territorial independence.
theaters The important Renaissance innovations in the-
ater building occurred in 15th- and 16th-century Italy. In-
terest in the Roman plays of PLAUTUSand TERENCEled to
the rise of the COMMEDIA ERUDITA; accompanying this was
an interest in authentic classical staging. In 1414 the dis-
covery at the monastery of St. Gall of VITRUVIUS’s De ar-
chitectura, book five of which dealt with theater design,
provided the classicizing stimulus to Italian innovators.
The manuscript was printed without its illustrations in
about 1486, with them in 1511, and in Italian translation
in 1521. Vitruvius’s principles and his emphasis on sym-
metry, proportion, and acoustics were eagerly adapted,
with varying results. A famous woodcut in an edition of
Terence (1493) illustrates the imposition of classical style
on earlier traditions of staging. (The theatrum (audito-
rium), placed above a ground storey of arches (fornices),
had three tiers for spectactors who faced a proscenium
(stage wall), which was divided by columns with curtains
between them.) Periaktoi (or, later, telari), triangular de-
vices at either side of the stage, the faces of which were
painted with rudimentary scenes and revolved to indicate
scene changes, were also adapted from the classical model
and were increased in number and improved by Bastiano
SANGALLO. LEONARDO DA VINCIwas an early experimenter
with painted scenery, producing a trompe l’oeil city scene
for a performance of Baldassare Taccone’s Danae in 1496.
Knowledge of perspective also vastly improved painted
sets, a feature that much impressed CASTIGLIONEat the
1513 staging of BIBBIENA’s La calandria in Urbino.
By the early 16th century several temporary theaters
had been constructed under the auspices of Italian courts
from the Vitruvian model. Although Ferrara had led the
way in classical performances (Plautus’s Menaechmi was
staged by Duke Ercole d’Este in the palace courtyard in
1486), Vicenza became the center of theater construction.
In the 1530s Sebastiano SERLIObuilt a classically inspired
temporary theater for the Vicenzan Accademia Olimpica.
He also recorded detailed plans for building a stage and
auditorium in a banqueting hall (Regole generali di ar-
chitettura, book 2); the stage sets behind the shallow play-
ing area, were designed with pronounced perspective
effects, and comedy, tragedy, and satire each had its own
characteristic set—a street of palaces for tragedy, houses
for comedy, and woodland for satire. PALLADIO, himself a
member of the Accademia Olimpica, was commissioned
to build the permanent theater. Based on Daniele BAR-
BARO’s commentary on Vitruvius (1556), Palladio’s Teatro
Olimpico, completed by SCAMOZZI, opened in 1585 with a
performance of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. This was the cul-
mination of neoclassical design, although, with its fixed
scenery of a piazza and perspective streets, it proved to be
dead-end and impractical for performances, even of
Roman comedy. A far more flexible arrangement was that
of the Teatro Farnese in Parma (1618; destroyed in World
War II), built to designs by Giovanni Battista Aleotti
(c. 1546–1636); there the proscenium arch and curtained
stage made their appearance, with a U-shaped (instead of
the previous semicircular) auditorium. Further develop-
ments, such as the horseshoe auditorium adopted for
opera and ballet, belong to a somewhat later period.
As in other fields, Italian Renaissance experimenta-
tion was far in advance of the rest of Europe in respond-
ing to classical ideas. However, new theaters having their
own national characteristics multiplied in the 16th cen-
tury. The first permanent theater in Paris was a long nar-
row structure, the Théâtre de l’Hôtel de Bourgogne, in the
rue Mauconseil. It was built in 1548 by the Confrérie de
la Passion, a lay society dedicated to performing mystères;
after 1578 it was occasionally let to professional compa-
nies. Spanish and Elizabethan English stages remained
open air. In Spain the typical stage was raised on scaffold-
ing in a courtyard and surrounded by spectators on bal-
conies or at windows. The unroofed London theaters,
such as the Globe (c. 1599) and Swan (c. 1595), reflected446622 tteerrzzaa rriimmaa