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The York Corpus Christi Plays, Clifford Davidson
The York Corpus Christi Plays, Clifford Davidson
Clifford Davidson
The feast of Corpus Christi, celebrated annually on Thursday after Trinity Sunday, was devoted to the Eucharist, and the normal practice was to have solemn processions through the city with the Host, the consecrated wafer that was believed to have been transformed into the true body and blood of Jesus. In this way the “cultus Dei” thus celebrated allowed the people to venerate the Eucharistic bread in order that they might be stimulated to devotion and brought symbolically, even mystically into a relationship with the central moments of salvation history. Perhaps it is logical, therefore, that pageants and plays were …
Corpus Christi Plays At York: A Context For Religious Drama, Clifford Davidson
Corpus Christi Plays At York: A Context For Religious Drama, Clifford Davidson
Clifford Davidson
For roughly two centuries, the streets of the city of York were home to the annual performance of a cycle of mystery plays held in conjunction with the festival of Corpus Christi. Remarkable as the resilience of such an event is, no scholar has yet to survey fully the plays' urban setting, especially with a view to understanding how and why they might have continued to appeal to citizens and spectators. One theory has been that the City of York made the guilds perform the plays. Yet, as Davidson argues, this is not a satisfactory solution, despite the admittedly coercive …