El Pelegrino dela Vida Humana

During the Middle Ages, allegory was probably the most popular literary device. Such works originated during Late Antiquity, regained popularity during the 12th century, and served the crucial purpose of synthesizing the worldviews of pagan antiquity and contemporary Christianity. Allegorical figures represented, often explicitly, ideas, feelings, attitudes, virtues, or vices that are explored in the text. This French incunabulum (an early printed book predating 1501), was printed in Tours by Henricus Mayer in 1490, and features 44 fine woodcuts adorning the Spanish text. In this story, an allegorical pilgrim encounters Reason, Nature, God’s Grace, Penitence, Charity, Idleness, Anger and many other characters. The author, a French Cistercian named Guillaume de Deguileville (1295 – ca. 1358), refers to the story as a dream, which he hopes will encourage all pilgrims to look to their own path toward the promise of God’s reward. Therefore, life itself is the pilgrimage and we are all pilgrims. Such a message of hope, stressing the intransigence of this life and the temporary nature of the sufferings in it, had tremendous appeal to medieval Europeans, for whom the danger of death by disease, hunger, accident, or violence was far higher than it is today.