ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the principal sources of the Auto de la huida a Egipto are all medieval texts and therefore more nearly contemporary with the composition of the Auto than the Gospels or the apocryphal gospels, or the fourth-century New Testament commentaries adduced as secondary influences. It shows that the Meditationes vitae Christi was a direct inspiration for the Auto, that its influence is apparent in some of number of small ways where there is an overlap in content, and even that it may have provided a model for one aspect of the characterization of the Peregrino. The chapter refers the Vita, which survives only in the vernacular, but it is presumed to derive from a lost Latin original. The Vita provides a lavish and endearing account of the childhood of Giovanni and his early ventures into the desert, full of picturesque detail, dialogue, and interior monologue.
