Performing the Word of God: Corpus Christi Drama in the Northern Province

Abstract

The feast of Corpus Christi, as is well known, seems to have been widely and rapidly adopted from the time of its formal promulgation at the Council of Vienne. The feast was being celebrated in England from within a few years of the Council. Processions of the Sacred Host were invariably the focus of these celebrations, and these appear sometimes to have been accompanied by Corpus Christi Plays in the form of Creation to Domesday drama cycles. Such are recorded for the first time at Beverley in 1377 and, indirectly, at York a year later.