Materialidad y santidad: Reliquias de ligna crucis en Santiago de Chile, siglos xvii y xviii

This paper sketches an interpretive approach to the scarce presence of relics in Santiago de Chile during the Colonial period. Taking stock of conventual sources and of some testamentary dispositions, the article delineates the discreet life that those sacred remains (and their associated visual objects) led within the religious life of the era. Through the prevailing presence of the ligna crucis and the occasional advent of other pious remains, the text unveils the widespread dissemination that foreign relics enjoyed during the Counterreformation, which allowed them even to reach the southern border of the Hispanic Empire.