Auto sacramental

A car sacramental is a one-act play that was traditionally played on Corpus Christi in Spanish-speaking countries . It's a specifically Spanish genre, but shows certain parallels to morality . The word auto is derived from the Latin actus (action).

Spiritual games existed in Spain from the 13th century. Around the same time, the first Corpus Christi processions took place, in the vicinity of which the pieces were created. The materials for this come from the Bible as well as the lives of martyrs and saints , and ancient materials that have been reinterpreted in Christian terms. The pieces were performed on floats and on improvised outdoor stages. In the autos sacramentales , on the one hand, type figures such as B. the king, the peasant or the beggar, and on the other hand allegorical characters that z. B. grace, hope, love, death, sin or even woman represented the world . The allegories deal in some form with the most holy sacrament .

From the 16th century the autos sacramentales gained notoriety alongside the secular comedias , which reached its climax with the plays by Pedro Calderón de la Barca , including The Great World Theater . Other well-known authors were Gil Vicente , Tirso de Molina , Mira de Amescua, Juan de Timoneda, Juan del Encina , Lope de Vega and José de Valdivielso .

In 1765 the performances were banned by royal decree and experienced a rebirth in the early 20th century with the Generación del 27 .

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• Rudolf Noack: Auto sacramental . In: Herbert Greiner-Mai (ed.): Small dictionary of world literature . VEB Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig, 1983, p. 105.
• Peter Simhandl: Theater history in one volume . Updated new edition. Henschel Verlag, Leipzig 2014, p. 103.
• Marina Ortrud M. Hertrampf: The '(un) sacred' space: the dimensions of space in the 'auto sacramental'. A (spatial theoretical) history of the genre from the early modern era to postmodernism. Peter Lang Verlag, Berlin 2018