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 (Feast of the
Body of Christ)
This feast is celebrated in the Latin Church on the Thursday after Trinity
Sunday to solemnly commemorate the institution of the Holy Eucharist.
Of Maundy Thursday, which commemorates this great event, mention is made as
Natalis Calicis (Birth of the Chalice) in the Calendar of Polemius (448) for
the 24th of March, the 25th of March being in some places considered as the
day of the death of Christ. This day, however, was in Holy Week, a season of
sadness, during which the minds of the faithful are expected to be occupied
with thoughts of the Lord's Passion. Moreover, so many other functions took
place on this day that the principal event was almost lost sight of. This is
mentioned as the chief reason for the introduction of the new feast, in the
Bull "Transiturus."
The instrument in the hand of Divine Providence was St. Juliana of Mont
Cornillon, in Belgium. She was born in 1193 at Retines near Liège. Orphaned
at an early age, she was educated by the Augustinian nuns of Mont Cornillon.
Here she in time made her religious profession and later became superioress.
Intrigues of various kinds several time drove her from her convent. She died
5 April, 1258, at the House of the Cistercian nuns at Fosses, and was buried
at Villiers.
Juliana, from her early youth, had a great veneration for the Blessed
Sacrament, and always longed for a special feast in its honour. This desire
is said to have been increased by a vision of the Church under the
appearance of the full moon having one dark spot, which signified the
absence of such a solemnity. She made known her ideas to Robert de Thorete,
then Bishop of Liège, to the learned Dominican Hugh, later cardinal legate
in the Netherlands, and to Jacques Pantaléon, at that time Archdeacon of
Liège, afterwards Bishop of Verdun, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and finally Pope
Urban IV. Bishop Robert was favourably impressed, and, since bishops as yet
had the right of ordering feasts for their dioceses, he called a synod in
1246 and ordered the celebration to be held in the following year, also,
that a monk named John should write the Office for the occasion. The decree
is preserved in Binterim (Denkwürdigkeiten, V, 1, 276), together with parts
of the Office.
Bishop Robert did not live to see the execution of his order, for he died 16
October, 1246; but the feast was celebrated for the first time by the canons
of St. Martin at Liège. Jacques Pantaléon became pope 29 August, 1261. The
recluse Eve, with whom Juliana had spent some time, and who was also a
fervent adorer of the Holy Eucharist, now urged Henry of Guelders, Bishop of
Liège, to request the pope to extend the celebration to the entire world.
Urban IV, always an admirer of the feast, published the Bull "Transiturus"
(8 September, 1264), in which, after having extolled the love of Our Saviour
as expressed in the Holy Eucharist, he ordered the annual celebration of
Corpus Christi in the Thursday next after Trinity Sunday, at the same time
granting many indulgences to the faithful for the attendance at Mass and at
the Office. This Office, composed at the request of the pope by the Angelic
Doctor St. Thomas Aquinas, is one of the most beautiful in the Roman
Breviary and has been admired even by Protestants.
The death of Pope Urban IV (2 October, 1264), shortly after the publication
of the decree, somewhat impeded the spread of the festival. Clement V again
took the matter in hand and, at the General Council of Vienne (1311), once
more ordered the adoption of the feast. He published a new decree which
embodied that of Urban IV. John XXII, successor of Clement V, urged its
observance.
Neither decree speaks of the theophoric procession as a feature of the
celebration. This procession, already held in some places, was endowed with
indulgences by Popes Martin V and Eugene IV.
The feast had been accepted in 1306 at Cologne; Worms adopted it in 1315;
Strasburg in 1316. In England it was introduced from Belgium between 1320
and 1325. In the United States and some other countries the solemnity is
held on the Sunday after Trinity.
In the Greek Church the feast of Corpus Christi is known in the calendars of
the Syrians, Armenians, Copts, Melchites, and the Ruthenians of Galicia,
Calabria, and Sicily.
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