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

Abstract

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.