The Bridge of San Luis Rey is set in 18th-century Peru, mostly in the capital city of Lima. At the time, the country was a colonial possession of the Spanish Empire. Each chapter spans decades, describing the life of a different character leading up to a tragic bridge collapse in 1714.
At the time the book takes place, the Spanish Empire was at its peak. Spain's colonial possessions in South America, which it had conquered by force over the past two centuries, had made it one of the world's richest countries. At the same time, as Wilder would have known, Spain was already beginning to decline as a European political power. The reader can see evidence of that decline, and a hint at the broader empire's dissolution, in the excess and dysfunction displayed by Lima's elite, namely the Viceroy and the Archbishop. The popular veneration of 16th-century Spanish writers such as Miguel Cervantes is also important to situating the novel in time. Through this aspect of the culture, Wilder shows that the Peruvian Spanish colonists are already looking back towards a vanished "golden age."
The Inquisition, the centuries-long persecution of Jews, Muslims, and other suspected "heretics" by Spain and other Catholic countries, lasted from 1570 to 1820 in Peru and looms large over the novel's world. Characters like Doña Clara worry that irreverent remarks about religious authorities could get them in trouble, and Brother Juniper is ultimately burned at the stake when his religious investigations depart from Catholic orthodoxy. Wilder often satirizes the close-minded and paranoid atmosphere created by the Inquisition—for example, mocking a woman whose only sin was "a furtive glance into Descartes." These remarks remind the reader that this historical setting is being filtered through Wilder's relatively modern 20th-century sensibility.
