On the path to oblivion: The pilgrims' declining role in the St. Christopher plays of early and early modern Spain.

Pilgrims & pilgrimages; Religious drama; Middle Ages

Saint Kitts; Spain

This article examines the representation of the pilgrim in the corpus of St. Christopher dramas of early and early modern Iberia. The importance of the character's supporting role varies according to the era in which each play is written. At first, in the medieval religious dramas of the Crown of Aragon, the pilgrim not only celebrates St. Christopher's piety and anticipates his meeting with Jesus Christ, but also embodies the sanctity and devotion necessitated of pilgrimage. The pilgrims undergo a transformation in the sixteenth century as they become comic and serve as foils to the protagonist's gravity. On the seventeenth-century secular stage, the representations diverge: they begin with a traditional representation of the pilgrim, but then the figure ultimately disappears as thecomediasfocus on the later period of St. Christopher's life, the result of a Tridentine directive that refocused the general worship of saints and hagiographical literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]