The Solemnity of Corpus
Christi (Body of Christ), now celebrated in the Latin Church on the
Sunday following Trinity Sunday
, commemorates the institution of the Holy Eucharist. Formerly celebrated
on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, it paralleled Maundy Thursday (Holy
Thursday), which also commemorates Our Lord's institution of the
Eucharist. Because Holy Thursday is in Holy Week, a season of sadness the
celebration Corpus Christi was introduced so that the faithful
would not lose sight of the institution of the Holy Eucharist.
Corpus Christi became a mandatory feast in the Roman Church in
1312. But nearly a century earlier, Saint Juliana of Mont Cornillon,
promoted a feast to honor the Blessed Sacrament. From early age Juliana,
who became an Augustinian nun in Liége, France, in 1206, had a great
veneration for the Blessed Sacrament, and longed for a special feast in
its honor. She had a vision of the Church under the appearance of the full
moon having one dark spot, which signified the absence of such a
solemnity. She made known her ideas to the Bishop of Liége, Robert de
Thorete, to the Dominican Hugh who later became cardinal legate in the
Netherlands, and to Jacques Panaléon, at the time Archdeacon of Liége and
who later became Pope Urban IV. Bishop Robert de Thorete ordered that the
feast be celebrated in his diocese.
Pope Urban IV later published
the Bull Transiturus (September 8, 1264), in which, after having
extolled the love of Our Savior as expressed in the Holy Eucharist,
ordered the annual celebration of Corpus Christi on the Thursday
after Trinity Sunday. More than four decades later, Pope Clement V
published a new decree which embodied Urban IV's decree and ordered the
adoption of the feast at the General Council of Vienna (1311). Pope John
XXII, successor of Clement V, urged this observance.
The processions on Corpus Christi to honor the Holy Eucharist were
not mentioned in the decrees, but had become a principal feature of the
feast's celebration by the faithful, and became a tradition throughout
Europe. These processions were endowed with indulgences by Popes Martin V
and Eugene IV.
source:
http://www.wf-f.org/CorpusChristi.html
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