Schroeter resurrects one Oscar Panniza, poet,physician and playwright, who authored the blasphemous play, Council ofLove, in 1894. Panniza was sentenced by a Bavarian court to a year inprison; in 1904 he was committed to an insane asylum where he diedseventeen years later. Schroeter's film begins with a reenactment ofPanniza's trial-an extension of the grotesque trial in Palermo orWolfsburg-based on existing records. After that, the play's the thing,performed, appropriately enough, in Rome, by Teatro Belli led by AntonioSalines. Set in the sixteenth century, in Heaven, Council of Lovedepicts a depraved Holy Family: God is senile, Mary is lascivious, andJesus is a zombie. Enraged by the dissipated society below, they engagethe Devil (a rather likeable and intellectual chap as portrayed bySalines himself, who also plays Panniza in the earlier scenes) topersecute mankind with syphilis, emanating from the Papal court of theBorgias. "Schroeter preserved the dramatic gestures and theframework of the theatre. However, he employed close-ups and adaptedhimself iconographically to trivial and classical religious art, settingthe aria texts and dialogues to extracts from a whole range of music. Afascinating, at times brilliant, polemic work of art (though) not a keywork in Schroeter's oeuvre". (Wolfram Schutte).