From the Street to the Stage: Performing Faith in the Virgin's Immaculacy at the University of Salamanca

This article analyzes the University of Salamanca's adoption of a statute requiring its students to pledge their conviction in the Virgin Mary's immaculacy by studying two texts commissioned for the occasion: Lope de Vega's play La limpieza no manchada (1618) and the Relación de las fiestas que la Universidad de Salamanca celebró (1618). The University of Salamanca's festivities offer a contextualized example of institutional performance of piety and political support for Philip III's endorsement of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception to reveal how academic theater strengthened the political ties of Spain's oldest and most important university with the Habsburg monarchy. Moreover, in La limpieza no manchada Lope includes in his staged feast of Mary's immaculacy references to a variety of races, ethnicities, and nations politically and historically tied to Spain to encourage his audience to come together as one multicultural and multiethnic nation of shared religious convictions.