Understanding Our Faith

The feast of Corpus Christi was a late arrival among feasts. It was first celebrated in Belgium in the diocese of Liege in 1246. It became a feast for the whole Church in 1264. Jacques Pantaleon, who had been the archdeacon of Liege, became Pope Urban IV in 1261 and declared it to be a feast for the whole Church.

The thirteenth century was the time when devotions to the Eucharist outside the celebration of Mass became very popular, the feast of Corpus Christi was the high point of this widespread devotion.

It was also a time when the faithful rarely went to communion. At the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, there was a decree that Catholics had to go to communion at least once a year at Easter so serious had this non-communicating become. Reverence for the host outside of Mass came to be something of a substitute for receiving communion.

Monstrances came onto the scene around the same time to be the means by which the Blessed Sacrament could be shown before the faithful for their devotions. Before there were monstrances, there were reliquaries which had been focuses of devotional attention for many centuries. Reliquaries became the models for the designing of monstrances.

Another development at the same time were processions of the Blessed Sacrament in which the Sacrament, surrounded by the clergy and candle bearers and under a canopy, was carried through the streets of Catholic cities. In non-Catholic countries, the processions tended to take place on Church property. These processions occurred especially on the feast of Corpus Christi.   

By:  Fr Frank O’Loughlin

Published:  31 May 2024