PSim Home > York Corpus Christi Play [ Staging | Contexts | Origin | Glossary ]
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an historical anecdote illustrating how the religious, economic, and civic
life of the medieval Christian were inextricably linked, read "A
Christ Taken Prisoner"
The outdoor theatrical event in the medieval city of York, England, known to its performers and audiences as the "Corpus Christi Play," is a collection of brief religious plays that together represent the story of Christian salvation. The York cycle is one of four that have survived in more or less complete form. The others are known as Chester, Wakefield, (after the cities where they were performed) and N-Town (now identified with no known city, but formerly identified as Townley). The York cycle was performed nearly every year, on the feast of Corpus Christi (Latin for the Body of Christ). The plays were already an established tradition in the late 14th century, and they continued in one form or other (weakened by Protestant censorship) until the mid-to-late 16th century.
Nobody knows who wrote the plays, or even how many authors there were, although the group of plays describing the Passion seems to bear the stamp of an exceptional dramatist now called "the York Realist." The plays date from the time before England's separation from the Church of Rome; as such, they emphasize the sacraments and rituals of the Catholic faith and urge people to salvation through active membership and participation in the community of worshippers. Since the plays were performed as part of a day-long celebration of Corpus Christi -- the presence of the Body of Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist -- they upheld the authority of the Church as a theological and moral guide for living in this world and the next.
To begin to understand the popularity and significance of the Corpus Christi plays, we must first recognize the significance of the feast being celebrated. During the early middle ages, as church architecture and artistry moved away from the conservatism necessitated by its beginnings as a renegade faith in a Pagan world, and as the rituals surrounding Christian worship grew more intricate, the interior design of churches evolved. As the churches grew in size, the altar grew more elaborate, and the people moved proportionately farther away from it; communion rails developed because it was inconvenient to have crowds rushing the ornate altars to receive the Host. These rails eventually developed into a screen of bars or wooden slats, behind which the priest would say the mass. In addition, the priest and the congregation both faced the tabernacle on the back wall, the end result being that the priest blocked the people's view of most of the mass. Over generations, the faithful began to associate the unseen elements of the service with an air of mystery.
Only when the priest lifted the consecrated wine and bread over his head in prayer -- a gesture known as the Elevation -- did the people get a clear view of the action.
In the cities people ran from church to church to see the elevated Host as often as possible, since they assumed that the more Elevations you saw, the more grace you would acquire. At the end of the twelfth century, stories began to circulate of miracles that had occurred at the moment of Elevation -- people had seen visions, the Host shone like the sun, a tiny child had appeared in the priest's hands, and so forth. In some congregations the majority of the faithful waited for the ringing of the sance-bell, which signaled the approaching consecration, before they even deigned to enter the church, and then, as soon as the Elevation was concluded rushed out again as quickly as they had come in. People started lawsuits to ensure that they obtained pews which provided a favourable view of the altar, and some priests even took bribes to protract the Elevation. (Harris 75)To address this growing problem, in 1264, Pope Urban IV suggested a new religious celebration that would bring the consecrated host out into the streets so that those who wishe