The repository is structured chronologically and offers an overview and inventory of the Ljubljana Jesuit drama activity: from tableaux vivants, declamations (with elements of drama), dialogues, and processions to the greatest variety of shorter and longer religious and school performances. When there were several theater performances in one year, they are also presented in chronological order for that year. If the chronological order cannot be reconstructed due to a lack of information, performances by the higher grades are listed first and then by the lower grades. When even this is not possible, the repository lists the material in the order used in the primary source.
The repository is designed such that the title introducing the presentation of the individual performance is as informative as possible. It provides the occasion (and, when possible, also the precise date) and title of the play in Slovenian. If the title of the play is unknown, it is named descriptively.
Performances or processions for which program notes, the play script, or a summary of the content of the procession is preserved are also presented as digital facsimiles. In cases when it was not possible to obtain permission to publish the entire digital facsimile, only the title page is published in the repository. The item’s location and shelf number are also provided alongside the graphic material. If the material was already available online before publication in the repository, a link to the original digital publication is added. The presentations also take into account duplicate material. Duplicates for which it was not possible to obtain permission to publish a digital facsimile are provided in curly brackets. All graphic material for publication in the repository was formatted by Marko Zaplatil, who also photographed the material from the Seminary Library, and sincere thanks are expressed to him for this.
For the performances by the Ljubljana Jesuits that are preserved as play scripts or as program notes, the original title is provided alongside the Slovenian title. If known, the original date of the performance appears below the title. When both the play script and the program notes are preserved, it frequently happens that the titles are not entirely consistent; because the titles are often missing from the manuscript plays, the title that appears in the printed program notes is used in the repository. If both the Latin and German program notes are preserved, both titles are taken into account. This decision was fostered by the conviction that in the future this will make it easier to search for possible additional specimens of individual program notes and plays. If the printed program notes are not preserved, the title of the manuscript program notes or the play is provided. If this is also missing, the title is given descriptively or based on what is written on the outer cover (e.g., Ms 058).
Each theater performance listed is accompanied by keys that make it possible to further categorize the performances in terms of 1) degree of preservation (mention in a source, preserved program notes, preserved play script, or preserved summary of the content of a Passion procession), 2) type of performance (tableau vivant, short performance, play, procession, acted scene, or play performed for a procession), and 3) whether the performance was part of the Jesuit school program, or part of its catechistic or pastoral activity (a school or religious performance). If any of these categories cannot be defined (with certainty) based on the information in the sources, it is not included in the description of the performance, or a question mark is added to the key indicating that it is not possible to define this detail of the performance with certainty.
Performances for which more information is preserved in primary sources (i.e., extant play scripts and program notes) and in secondary sources (Jesuit annual reports, annals, and diaries) are presented in greater detail in tabular format. In addition to basic information (the title, type, date, and occasion of the performance), more details are provided on the topic of the performance, as well as information about any dedications and financial awards that the college received for the performance, about the audience and the venue, and about details of the performance (the actors, possible authorship, the set and costumes, or the role of music and dance in the performance). The last part of the table is reserved for additional interesting details that have been preserved for individual performances in the sources and literature.
The theater performances (both the processions and tableaux vivants as well as shorter and longer performances) that are known only by their titles and occasion are presented only in brief in the repository, in line with the principles presented above and with the source added. When the title includes all the essential information that could be gleaned from the source, the description quoted from the source is not translated into Slovenian. A Slovenian translation is added for longer descriptions. For the period between 1597 and 1691, for translating descriptions from Historia annua Societatis Iesu Labacensis into Slovenian the 2003 book edition of that source is used. The Slovenian translation was made by Marija Kiauta. For descriptions of the mummers’ play Paradiž or Rajski vrt, the translation by Kozma Ahačič (Zgodovina misli o jeziku na Slovenskem: katoliška doba, 2012) was of assistance. All the other translations from Latin and German were made by the author and editor of the repository.
If there is little or no evidence of drama activity for individual years of the Ljubljana Jesuit college operation (e.g., 1669, 1680, 1691, 1711, and 1717), an attempt was made to find the reason for this in the source itself or to look for it in other contemporary sources, not necessarily Jesuit ones. The reasons for such an absence are provided in a descriptive or literal translation or in a brief Slovenian summary along with the source cited.
Designing the repository in line with the TEI guidelines was the work of Andrej Pančur, the head of the infrastructure program Slovenian Historiography Research Infrastructure at the Institute of Contemporary History.
The digital repository is based on very diverse sources: manuscript and printed primary material (Latin manuscript plays, printed and manuscript program notes in Latin and German or bilingual form, and summaries of the content of processions), manuscript secondary sources (Jesuit annual reports, annals, and diaries in Latin), the printed edition of a source (Historia annua Collegii Societatis Iesu Labacensis –Letopis Ljubljanskega kolegija Družbe Jezusove), and literature (e.g., Dolničarjeva Ljubljanska kronika od l. 1660 do l. 1718,Das Jesuitenkolleg in Laibach und die Residenz Pleterje, and Sloveniae scriptores latini recentioris aetatis). For citation purposes, it was necessary to introduce a unified system to the extent possible despite the diversity of the sources, and so certain compromises had to be adopted.
The Latin citations from Historia annua (1597–1691) are taken from the book edition of that source, in which all the abbreviations, breviographs, suspensions, contractions, and ligatures are written out. Because of this and to aid understanding of the text, citations from other sources in the repository are also copied in written-out form; retained in the text are only ligatures (æ, œ), diacritics (e.g., é, è, ê), and well-known and established abbreviations; for example, D. (Dominus), S. (Sanctus) I. or J. (Iesus, Jesus), S. C. M. (Sacra Caesarea Maiestas), S. R. I. (Sacrum Romanum Imperium), and Soc. (Societas).
Punctuation placement follows the recommendations used: for the Latin and Slovenian printed edition of Historia annua, the decision of the editor and translator of the text was followed, and citations from other sources use the original punctuation placement. Upper- and lower-case letters were also used in line with the original. In the transcriptions, the distinction was maintained between u and v,i and j, and ſ and s.
Unclear places in the sources are indicated with a question mark in parentheses (?). Intentionally omitted parts of the text are indicated with slashes: /…/; if the text in the original is also incomplete, this is indicated with square brackets […]. Square brackets are also used to indicate the years of plays that are the result of an editorial assumption but are not unambiguously attested in the sources. Square brackets are also used for citing pages in Historia annua up to the year 1691: the first number indicates the page number in the book edition, and the number in square brackets is the original page of the annal in the manuscript version held by the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia (ARS, SI AS 1073, 180r).
For the sake of the greatest brevity in referring to the sources of the citations in the repository, the most frequent locations of sources and sources themselves are abbreviated as follows:
In concluding the presentation of the internal structure of the repository, a few words are due regarding the digital facsimiles. The label Ms in the name of a digital facsimile indicates a manuscript play, the label Per program notes, and Proc a summary of the content of a Passion procession. A number following the label for the type of material (Ms, Per, Proc) indicates the running number of a Jesuit play or procession for which primary material is also preserved. If both the program notes and the play are preserved for the same performance, the number next to the name is repeated; for example, Ms 001 ANSJ indicates that the manuscript play is preserved, and Per 001 ANSJ that the printed program notes are preserved. Special consideration was given to extant specimens of manuscript program notes; despite the fact that these are manuscripts, for the name I decided to give priority to the type of the material and to preserve the distinction between plays and program notes (e.g., Per 021 DMCH and Per 048 PRTH). If two completely identical specimens of the program notes for the same performance were preserved and when both of them are published in the repository, the letter b is added to the name of the second one (e.g., Per 027 APLY, Per 027 APLYb). An exception is specimens of individual printed Latin and German program notes for the same performance that were preserved separately in different institutions. I considered these to be independent units (e.g., Per 036 KTFL and Per 037 RFPI; Per 049 VGHJ and Per 050 CAFJ).