on near Liege (1222-1258),
had a vision in which the need for the establishment of a festival in
honour of the Sacrament was revealed to her, the matter was taken up
with enthusiasm by the clergy, and in 1246 Robert de Torote, bishop of
Liege, instituted such a festival for his diocese. The idea, however,
did not spread until, in 1261, Jacob Pantaleon, archdeacon of Liege,
ascended the papal throne as Urban IV. By a bull of 1264 Urban made the
festival, hitherto practically confined to the diocese of Liege,
obligatory on the whole Church,[1] and a new office for the festival was
written by Thomas Aquinas himself. As yet the stress was laid on
reverence for the Holy Sacrament as a whole; there is no mention in
Urban's bull of the solemn procession and exposition of the Host for the
adoration of the faithful, which are the main features of the festival
as at present celebrated. Urban's bull was once more promulgated, at the
council of Vienne in 1311, by Pope Clement V.; and the procession of
the Host in connexion with the festival was instituted, if the accounts
we possess are trustworthy, by Pope John XXII.

From this time onwards the festival increased in popularity and in
splendour. It became in effect the principal feast of the Church, the
procession of the Sacrament a gorgeous pageant, in which not only the
members of the trade and craft gilds, with the magistrates of the
cities, took part, but princes and sovereigns. It thus became in a high
degree symbolical of the exaltation of the sacerdotal power.[2] In the
15th century the custom became almost universal of following the
procession with the performance of miracle-plays and mysteries,
generally arranged and acted by members of the gilds who had formed part
of the pageant.

The rejection of the doctrine of transubstantiation at the Reformation
naturally involved the suppression of the festival of Corpus Christi in
the reformed Churches. Luther, in spite of his belief in the Real
Presence, regarded it as the most harmful of all the medieval festivals
and, though he fully realized its popularity, it was the first that he
abolished. This attitude of the reformers towards the festival, however,
intensified by their abhorrence of the traffic in indulgences with which
it had become closely associated, only tended to establish it more
firmly among the adherents of the "old religion." The procession of the
Host on Corpus Christi day became, as it were, a public demonstra