Play of Saint Lawrence
play by Joseph of Anchieta in Portuguese, Spanish, and Tupi

Play of Saint Lawrence (Portuguese: Auto de São Lourenço) is one of the most well-known plays by Joseph of Anchieta. It is written in Portuguese, Spanish, Old Tupi, and Old Guarani, reflecting the social reality of the time. It records ethnographic information, such as the tearful salutation, as well as toponyms and sparsely documented episodes, such as the Battle of the Canoes. Play of Saint Lawrence was first performed in Saint Lawrence Chapel, in what would later become the city of Niterói. According to Armando Cardoso, this would have occurred on 10 August 1587, during Anchieta's visit as provincial. The work was adapted by Guilherme de Almeida.
The public source identifies “Play of Saint Lawrence” as play by Joseph of Anchieta in Portuguese, Spanish, and Tupi. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Play, Saint and Lawrence.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q124499774. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1587.
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This entry incorporates text from “Play of Saint Lawrence” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.