Antonio M. Rueda
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Tinker Report
At the end of the Middle Ages, Theater in Spain was established around the Catholic Church and the Court. Spanish Theater was mainly religious and it was made during the principal liturgical celebrations such as Christmas, the Epiphany, the Passion and Resurrection of Christ and, later, the Corpus Christi. These religious representations included performances such as joyful songs, dances and masquerades. The Christmas drama and the Passion and Resurrection drama became very famous before the advent of the Early Modern period. However, it is the celebration of the Corpus Christi which acquired an unprecedented popular support in the 1550s.
After receiving the Tinker grant, I spent four weeks in Seville and Madrid during the month of July of 2009. During my time in Spain, I conducted archival research in the following archives: Archivo de la Catedral de Sevilla and Archivo del Arzobispado de Sevilla; Biblioteca Colombina de Sevilla; Archivo Municipal de Sevilla and Archivo de Protocolos de Sevilla; and, in Madrid, I went to the Biblioteca Nacional. In these places, I found documents that I have never read about in the research that I did prior to this trip. These documents helped me to learn information that was totally unknown to me and that have been an excellent complement to the previous research that I did at Tulane.
My study has dealt with the development of early modern theater in the city of Seville. The goal of this research was that of tracing the different stages of this development at a social and popular level. I intended to study the religious origin of the different types of theatrical activities that developed in the sixteenth century and how this Theater anticipated the seventeenth century Theater. To date, there have been no studies which have analyzed the transformation of a religious theater into the modern theater or “comedia nueva” of the Spanish Golden Age in the city of Seville. As I have already done research on the celebration of Corpus Christi from a liturgical point of view, through this research, I have been able to extend my knowledge of this festivity combining the liturgical element with the performative element.
Before my trip to Europe, I contacted with the archives in Seville in order to ask them about the distribution of the files. They were very kind to me and the information they provided helped me to know in advance where I should go to find the documents that were going to be more useful for my research project. During the first week of the project, I consulted the archives of the “Archivo de la Catedral de Sevilla” and the “Archivo del Arzobispado de Sevilla”, that are located in an adjacent building to the world-famous Cathedral of Seville. There, I found documents written by the organizers of the Corpus Christi processions listing the companies that worked from 1554 to the early seventeenth century as well as the different written exchanges between these organizers prior to deciding the features of the processions. Through these documents, I was able to know the plays that were performed, the most frequent topics, and the routes which the different companies took around the city.
In my second week in Seville, I went to the “Biblioteca Colombina de Sevilla”, a research library where I consulted the Ecclesiastical and Secular Annals of the city in the sixteenth century. The information that these documents provided me was invaluable to contextualize the information from the documents consulted at the Cathedral’s archives and to find that the social and economic history of the city is strongly linked to the development of religious and theatrical representations.
During the third week, I spent my time consulting the sources of the “Archivo Municipal de Sevilla”. This archive houses a great amount of letters written by the different organizers of the religious celebrations making decisions about the changes that they would do every year. The “Archivo Municipal” also contains documents that gave me a general knowledge of the role of the local authorities in the planning of these celebrations. The “Actas Capitulares” are a series of documents describing the composition and elements of staging and the distribution of the performances. As I intended to shed new light on the establishment of the social and institutional dimensions of Seville, these documents allowed to understand the complex relation that existed between the owners of the theaters in Seville and the directors of the theatrical companies. Comparing the documents from 1554 to the end of the sixteenth century, I was able to understand the development that the theatrical representations had in the city and in what way these can be considered the germ of the “comedia nueva”.
In my fourth and last week in Spain, I travelled to Madrid to conduct research in the “Biblioteca Nacional”. In this library, I found many documents that dealt with the hiring and description of foreign theatrical companies that came to Seville to perform in the celebrations of the Corpus Christi. I have made a good use of these documents since they have allowed me to trace the differences between the theatrical companies and the developmental changes that the Sevillian Theater experienced in the second half of the sixteenth century.
As I am planning to focus my PhD studies on the Spanish Theater of the sixteenth century, the experience that I have gained working in these archives has broadened my perspective with regards to research questions. The information and data gathered will certainly be useful in my future studies as I am planning to present two original papers at two different conferences using documents that have never been explored and analyzed. Because of this, I am extremely grateful to the Stone Center for giving me this opportunity.