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 (Holy) Thursday commemorates this great event but
this day, however, is 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 times 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 honor. 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 favorably
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 Savior 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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