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.
