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The Corpus Christi Procession in Medieval York: A Symbolic Struggle in Public Space

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Erik Paul Weissengruber
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Extract

The Corpus Christi celebrations of medieval York provide a good opportunity for studying how symbolic power structures social relations, and how institutions reproduce their legitimacy at a time when the procession as well as the presentation of the pageant wagons were rigorously supervised by the city council. The elaborate procession of torches honoring the sacrament, a little discussed aspect of these celebrations, is particularly useful for such a study, because the records of the guilds provide surprising indications of the extent to which the supposedly solemn procession honoring the sacrament was characterized by disruption. These documents contradict those historians who normally treat both the procession and the pageants as representations staged in civic space that mirrored a united civic body. The negotiations surrounding the Skinner's participation in the Corpus Christi ceremonies of 1419 and the conflict of civic, religious, and royal authority in determining the position of the Cordwainers in the celebrations of 1490 provide traces of a different history—a history of a representation of social distinctions rather than a representation of undifferentiated community. This is a history of struggle between groups with different interests, engaging in symbolic struggle to maintain or alter the social distinctions embodied in the form of the procession.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , May 1997 , pp. 117 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1997

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References

1. Bourdieu, Pierre, Language and Symbolic Power, ed. Thompson, John B., trans. Raymond, Gino and Adamson, Matthew (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 40Google Scholar.

2. Bourdieu, 40.

3. All references to the civic records of York, unless otherwise noted, are taken from Johnson, Alexandra F. and Rogerson, Margaret, Records of Early English Drama: York, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), hereafter referred to as YorkGoogle Scholar.

4. Johnston, Alexandra F., “The Plays of the Religious Guilds of York: the Creed Play and the Pater Noster Play,” Speculum 50 (January 1975): 60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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6. David Crouch suggests that those who got to view the pageant from the seating at the ordained stopping places were “the city elite, the master artisans, and their households” and that the majority had a poor view of both the play and the procession. See Crouch, David, “Paying to See the Play: The Stationholders on the Route of the York Corpus Christi Play in the Fifteenth Century,” Medieval English Theatre 13:1–2 (1991): 100–101Google Scholar. While participation in the festival of Corpus Christi may have been universal, the experiences of the upper members of the civic hierarchy was qualitatively different from those of the average citizen. The “universality” of the Corpus Christi festival was a very vague one rather than concrete and experiential.

7. York, 2:717.

8. Cowling, Douglas, “The Liturgical Celebration of Corpus Christi in Medieval York,” Records of Early English Drama 2 (1976): 8–9Google Scholar.

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15. Smith, Lucy Toulmin dates the list at 1420, Introduction, York Mystery Plays (London: 1885), xxvii-xxviiiGoogle Scholar; Johnston dates it between 1417 and 1422, “The Procession and Play of Corpus Christi in York after 1426,” Leeds Studies in English 7 (1974): 376Google Scholar.

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22. York, 1:126.

23. York, 2:709.

24. York, 1:127.

25. York, 1:186.

26. York, 1:252–253.

27. York, 1:252.

28. York, 1:252–253.

29. Swanson, Heather, “The Illusion of Economic Structure: Craft Guilds in Late Medieval English Towns,” Past and Present 121 (November 1988): 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. Ibid., 38.

31. Ibid., 44.

32. York, 2:706; 2:711.

33. York, 1:125–126.

34. York, 1:158.

35. Swanson, 39.

36. York, 1:162–164. This document contains all the information cited in this paragraph.

37. York, 2:794–795; 1:165.

38. York, 1:165.

39. York, 1:169–170.

40. York, 1:170.

41. York, 1:170; 1:172.

42. Bourdieu, 123.

43. Dorrell, “Two Studies,” 75–76.

44. Stevens, 45.

45. Ibid., 113.

46. Ibid., 61.

47. James, 15.

48. Stevens, 34; James, 15.

49. Stevens, 34.

50. James, 9.

51. Ibid., 10.

52. Ibid., 11.

53. Bourdieu, 113.