Spectacle and religion in Baroque Spain: the popular missions

Abstract

This article provides new facts about religious life in Spain in the second half of the XVIIth Century and the beginning of the XVIIIth Century through the study of the popular missions. The author studies the rhetorical and theatrical aspects of the missions that Jesuits and Capucins developed in this country, which were essential to persuade and convert people, insisting in the fact that they all were linked with the Baroque Culture. Also, the popular missions were one of the principal tools to spread a devout model of religious life to the wider population. This new practice was sustained by the congregations founded by the missionaries in the villages, that encouraged particular devotional practices and a new kind of religious motives which are typical of the Postridentine period.