Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Introduction Civic Drama and Worship
- Part 1 Corpus Christi Play
- Chapter 1 The York Cycle and Corpus Christi
- Part 2 The Selection and Organisation of the Cycle
- Part 3 Feast of Feasts
- Part 4 … or Feast of Fools
- Select Bibliography
- Index of Liturgical References
- General Index
Chapter 1 - The York Cycle and Corpus Christi
from Part 1 - Corpus Christi Play
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Introduction Civic Drama and Worship
- Part 1 Corpus Christi Play
- Chapter 1 The York Cycle and Corpus Christi
- Part 2 The Selection and Organisation of the Cycle
- Part 3 Feast of Feasts
- Part 4 … or Feast of Fools
- Select Bibliography
- Index of Liturgical References
- General Index
Summary
Various lay celebrations grew up around Europe to mark Corpus Christi Day, generally focused on the processing of the consecrated Host around or through the civic space. The route taken by such a procession, and the spaces included in and excluded from its compass, signified urban and/or ecclesiastical understandings of the nature of the city and the hierarchies governing it. The line-up of groups accompanying the Host also reflected civic hierarchies, commonly separating the ecclesiastical from the lay. The laity was generally mustered according firstly to the hierarchy of central civic government, and secondly in confraternal organisations that processed in an order that reflected their relative status. Many cities in Spain still celebrate Corpus Christi Day in this manner. Valencia's particularly elaborate celebration, which also involves processions of dancing troupes, of horse-drawn wagons carrying allegorical tableaux, of giants, and of biblical characters carrying their attributes, culminates in the processing of the Host in its monstrance around a designated route in the city accompanied by representatives of the civic, ecclesiastical, and military authorities. Valencia's is only one surviving example of the manner in which Corpus Christi Day has been and is used to express, through the processional mode, divine sanction of the make-up and ordering of power and authority in the civic space.
Confraternities commonly define and sanction power- and interest-groupings in civic spaces. They are also a common organisational mechanism for the production of events designed to give symbolic expression to the specific nature of power and interests in the same spaces.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City , pp. 10 - 30Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2006