though scholars used to think that all of society revolved around the guilds, the guild structure was largely undeveloped before the Black Death (14c). Modern Marxists imagined the guilds were labor organizations, developed by the rising working class to protect their economic and political rights. More recent research suggests that the guilds were formed by the city officials in order to organize and control various conflicting business interests. They were run not by workers but by the bosses -- master guildsmen who controlled who was hired and who got training; these masters aspired to be landlords and city officials, and moved freely in these circles. For the few at the top of the guild structure, the York Play might have been part of a class struggle being waged in the city. The working class did have its own organizations, called "Fraternities." These were similar to the modern JayCees, Knights of Columbus or Shriners; they were attached to a specific parish and focusing on charity -- an enormous amount of which was needed in the days before large-scale government social programs.
To modern Christians, the term "religious theater" tends to conjure up images of terrified but cute kids wearing dishtowels on their heads at Christmas time, or silly-looking adults playing guitars and singing with puppets. Because the feast being celebrated is named for the body of Christ, the York plays emphasize the importance of that body, dwelling on its actions, its symbolic significance, and, of course, its death and resurrection. Many Protestants will be uncomfortable with the play's presentation of Christ's suffering, as well as the implied and direct significance of "the body of Christ" and its relationship to the bread and wine offered during Christian worship.
A colleague of mine recently rolled his eyes and moaned in mimicry of traditional paintings of Christ's passion, calling such images "offensive" to an Evangelical Protestant mindset. During the Reformation, all artistic reminders of the medieval church, and the public's lingering attachment to them, constituted grave threats to the new Protestant order, prompting Protestant reformers to act quickly to suppress them (see Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400-1580). As a result, many protestant denominations have all but lost what was once a popular and powerful devotional tradition: affective piety -- a religious zeal which affects the emotions, by way of statues, images, and devotional legends which expound upon core religious messages. (See "Affective Piety," below).
Every Easter in the Philippines, pious volunteers carry crosses through the streets and actually allow themselves to be temporarily crucified (with stainless steel nails sterilized in alcohol) in order to fully understand the grief and pain which Jesus underwent on the cross. Religious devotion which encourages the faithful to meditate deeply upon the physical and emotional sufferings of holy figures is called "affective piety." The Philippines example may be extreme; however, affective piety was an important part of medieval religious instruction, designed to stir the personal devotion of people living in a society that took religion for granted. In their private chambers, using a picture, a statue, or spoken prayers to feed their spiritual imagination, the devout entered into the suffering of Christ, a martyr or some other holy figure with a psychological totality that we today would probably describe as a very extreme form of method acting.
Many modern Christians may be tempted to dismiss or ridicule such devotional practices, yet these same critics may have no problem with the idea of responding with powerful emotion to contemporary religious music or extemporaneous spoken prayer. Meanwhile secular culture provides many opportunities for people to cry over the imaginary troubles of soap opera characters, or to cheer or curse a televised sporting event. In the absence of television or recorded sound, the medieval faithful responded in much the same way to icons